by Susan Thomas
Her calm relaxed manner was having a rather strange effect on him. He wanted to talk and demonstrate he wasn't as weird as the girls at the office thought him, but lacked the skills to do so.
"You're different from the other girls."
She smiled. "You mean I haven't managed to hide my two heads?"
He took a deep breath, realising he was making an idiot of himself. "No," he said firmly, "I mean you aren't like the other girls."
"Is it the two heads thing?"
"No, the girls at the office seem to me to fall into three categories. First there are the man- and fashion-obsessed ones; then there are the ruthless career types; and finally the 'couldn't care less about their jobs' type who just want to go clubbing. You don't fall into those categories."
"Rather a harsh judgement I think, but you are right, I'm not interested in career, I do my job and go home and my socialising is at home. I am considered odd by the other girls I know, but we get on alright so all is fine."
"I'm considered odd too."
"Yes I know, they talk about you a lot."
"What do they say?"
"Nothing special. Some think you are gay but that guy in accounts who is gay says quite firmly that you aren't, so really they just think weird."
"What do you think?"
"Maybe it's having the two heads," she grinned to take the nastiness out, "but I haven't thought about you at all."
Suddenly he saw the funny side of his embarrassment at asking to take the empty seat. He burst out laughing. "I am sorry. My apologies for being an idiot."
She simply grinned. "Well I've finished so I had better go and leave my space for someone else. It will be their turn to be embarrassed."
I expect you now think that some conversational gem was pulled and they made a date. You'd be quite wrong about that, they went their separate ways. But something did change. She asked some of the girls in her department why he was considered so weird. How she did this, without making it seem as if she was interested, is her secret.
"Oh God, he's just so creepy! He doesn't approve of women, or at least not the women here. He has some really funny ideas you know. He thinks we should wait until we are married before having sex."
"Really," she exclaimed, "that is just so outrageous."
Her irony was lost on them and they diverted the conversation to the stud in Maintenance, believed to be able to do it longer than any other man living.
He on the other hand asked a colleague about her, explaining his enquiry by saying he had been forced to sit next to her at lunch.
"Weird, that's what she is."
"In what way?"
"Well every guy here has had a shot at pulling her, you know. Well, every guy but you and that gay one in Accounts. She has been very sweet but nothing. Some of the guys say she is a dyke, but the dyke in customer services says that she isn't. Some say she is frigid except she doesn't come across like that, so she is weird."
"As it happened, as it was meant to happen," is such a fitting description that we must apply it here. Quite separately, they were chosen to go on a residential course together. The coupling of their names was, we must believe, humanly random, but clearly destiny was at work. At the hotel, they met and discovered who their colleague was to be.
She smiled, he smiled, and this time took the initiative. "Ah, the girl with two heads."
"Sssh," she said, "I'm trying to keep it quiet."
Later, after a tedious day of politically-correct and over-intense nonsense that had cost their company an arm and a leg, they sat with a drink in the bar, relieved there was only one more day to go.
For some reason she was the one this time who felt embarrassed and fumbled to fill the silence with words. "I am told you don't approve of women."
"Yes, I can imagine. Well I don't approve of quite a lot of things but it isn't women as such. I don't approve of casual sex and using abortion as a contraceptive. I don't approve of drunkenness and binge drinking. I don't approve of women who marry and have kids but leave their children in child care from eight in the morning till six at night and fill the house with material goods by way of compensation."
"So what do you approve of?"
"Me? Well I approve of marriage and a husband and wife bringing up their children together with preferably the wife at home, but even a role swap would be OK. I do know a young couple where she can earn more as a teacher than he can as a postman so he runs the home and looks after their two young children and she works. Better than day care in my opinion. I also believe that in a marriage the man should be the head which these days is so frowned upon I am positively an exile from our society."
She shook her head sadly. "Weird, certainly. I think I'll call you Mr Weird."
"Anyway, enough of me. Do you have a boyfriend, live with someone, flat share?"
She looked very serious. "Oh dear, I think I am going to shock you now and just as we were getting to know one another too."
She was straight-faced enough but he had begun to suspect that she was a mischief, something he found intriguing. "Go on do, I promise to keep my shock in check."
She sighed. "OK, well I live at home with my parents and I love and respect them very much. If that isn't bad enough, I know lots of men and go out with them in groups but not one of them interests me enough to go further. Worse still, I teach a Sunday school class. Shocking I know and so un-cool in the twenty-first century, but I can't help myself."
"You know what you are, missy?"
"No?"
"A mischief is what, I know a cure for it but it's not something you'd care to hear about. Is that actually all true or is that just a wind up?"
She assured him every word was true, and he believed her. Now you expect another smooth transition to a closer relationship, don't you? No, I am afraid not, life is rarely like that. Over the weekend he was asked to go to help out with some changes in the American branch of their company, and spent six weeks in Baltimore. When he came back she'd gone; resigned and left a week before and, given the HR department's obsessions, he had no chance of getting her address.
For him it was more than a shame, for he had a feeling that she was a girl he could marry. She had spirit and a sense of humour, but the values she espoused were similar to his and he felt she might well go the extra step of becoming... no of being, the sort of wife he felt was right and traditional.
In fact he was becoming desperate, for he knew his views of life were considered weird and, what was worse, very few knew the full extent of his views. He was on the point of accepting a celibate bachelorhood when he saw the brass plate by the door of a well-maintained Georgian property in Church Street, where most of the old houses were now used for such folk as solicitors and accountants. It read, 'Mrs Pendle, Arrangements'. 'Arrangements' was an odd title so what did it mean? An impulse had him walking through the door and as luck would have it he met Mrs Pendle herself, an imposing looking woman of about fifty and most smartly dressed.
"May I help you?"
"I'm sorry, mere curiosity I am afraid, what on earth is 'arrangements' all about?"
She smiled politely, "I am sure you have heard of old-fashioned marriage bureaus now all termed, dating agencies." She invested this phrase with considerable contempt. "Well, we are a cousin, if you will, harking back to an earlier time, and extremely successful if rather quiet about it. We arrange marriages by which I mean if you became our client in order to find a wife, we do exactly that, find you a wife and you marry her."
Perhaps it was the use of 'old-fashioned' or perhaps it was fate again taking a hand, who can tell, but he came back with a heartfelt, "I could do with someone finding me a wife." Soon he was sitting in a comfortable office with a cup of most excellent coffee and answering Mrs Pendle's routine questions.
"Well, Mr Lancaster," she began when the questions were done, "we offer two services. The first is the Shaftsbury where we present you with a lady to be your wife, and with this service you may refuse her if you
wish and remain our client. Then there is the Roseberry, for that one we present you with your wife to be and if you refuse you are no longer our client. With both services the lady in question will already have elected to marry the man we choose."
His eyes opened wide. "It is literally an arranged marriage!"
"Yes, of course, and we take great pains with choosing a husband or a wife. We have had one hundred and fifty Roseberry marriages now, and all are together and content. There have been two hundred and ten Shaftsbury marriages and one unfortunately has not worked out but that is one failure in twenty years."
"So do the women..."
"Ladies, please, we are not a cattle market."
"Sorry, so do the ladies get the Roseberry or Shaftesbury choices?"
"No, the ladies sign up to be found a husband and marry him. They can be very upset if they are turned down by a Shaftesbury gentleman."
"I am struggling to believe all this."
She smiled and said, "I believe I am reading you right when I say that you are a gentleman who wishes for a traditional wife, one who will accept your authority. Furthermore, you may wish to assert your authority in the manner we tend to refer to as 'time-honoured' here at Arrangements."
He agreed and she carried on. "Well, we do insist on a psychological profile being drawn up before presenting you to your future wife. We do have a duty to her on that account but we can certainly arrange a marriage for you to a lady who would wish to be in such a marriage."
The fee was very high indeed but his desire to have a wife and family of the sort he wanted overcame his initial shock and, after all, he was not a poor man, so he signed up and an appointment was made for him to see their psychologist.
The trouble was he kept seeing 'the girl with two heads' every time he day-dreamed about his future wife. He'd come home from work to be rushed at by two small children and there from the kitchen, smiling and possibly swelling with the third child, would be his fair-haired mischief. Or she would have gone a step too far with some of her mischief and, although she was contrite, they both knew what must happen; she'd be over his knee with her knickers around her ankles while he expunged her silliness with a good spanking. Then, of course, there was their love-making. He somehow sensed that, although a good well brought up young woman in every respect, she was passionate, and once married would enjoy the physical side very much indeed.
Daydreams are all very well but he'd never even been out with her, and although they had got on quite well on the course, he had no basis for his daydreams and didn't even know where she lived, so back to reality. His reality was that, in this age to even suggest a woman should remain at home and look after the children while the man worked, was considered unacceptable, but to suggest that the man should be the head of the household – well, that was reactionary misogyny. To go any further and hint that he should have the right to spank, well... such a man should be locked up. Mrs Pendle, though, assured him she had ladies, attractive intelligent ladies, signed up for an arranged marriage. It fitted with a bit he had read in a newspaper article about how a growing number of well-off young women were eschewing career and opting for marriage and children, except of course they had to be rich men.
Mrs Pendle had told him that because her agency was so careful and very particular about its matches, it would take time and he must be patient, unlike dating agencies who would flood him with unsuitable matches just to keep him hooked. Since he was patient and busy, he bided his time and waited for her call. When it came it was a shock. In spite of knowing her call would come sooner or later, it shocked him when he picked up his 'phone and Mrs Pendle announced. "We have your future wife, as you have chosen Shaftesbury I will run through some details rather than introducing you straight away. It saves the lady from unnecessary feelings of rejection. Please make an appointment and we can tell you all about her."
He sat while Mrs Pendle gave the outline which sounded perfect for him. She was the right sort of age; the right sort of build and colouring; had a good solid education; her background upbringing was as he would hope; she was a church goer as he was; she was happy to have, indeed wanted, a man who was a leader in his own family; she wanted children and was unconcerned with her career, preferring to be a home maker; what was more she accepted that from time to time she did need correcting and that a spanking really was a good way of dealing with it. She sounded like Little Miss Perfect to him, and he asked to see the video clip of her that the agency had made.
Mrs Pendle had never before had a gentleman client who saw only five seconds of a video and said decisively, "I'll marry her."
She paused the video. "Don't you want to watch the rest?"
"No." Even as he spoke he was beginning to stand. "When can I meet her?"
She was stunned and, after a hesitation of disapproval, said that she would be in contact shortly. They would be introduced at the agency in a small parlour kept solely for the purpose.
On his way home he had to keep hugging himself with delight. The girl would marry him; that was how the agency worked. Whatever man they presented was her future husband; he could relax and just be himself; she already wanted him and he wanted her, now they just had to get to know each other. "My cup runneth over," he muttered to himself.
---oOo---
Mrs Pendle led him towards the parlour when the day for their appointment arrived. "She is rather nervous, Mr Lancaster. Many of our ladies are at this point as you may well imagine, but remember she is your bride-to-be."
He smiled. "I am a touch nervous myself, but I am sure we will do well together."
Mrs Pendle opened the door and announced in quite a gentle voice, "Naomi, I present your husband-to-be. Jack, meet Naomi."
She turned and then with a huge smile greeted him. "Why, it's Mr Weird."
"Hello Girl with Two Heads."
They stood grinning inanely at each other until Mrs Pendle, in what can only be termed an outraged voice cried, "You know each other?"
Jack Lancaster knew when to placate a woman and when not. Mrs Pendle needed to be placated and he explained, finishing, "...so when I saw that video that was it." Mrs Pendle seemed rather pleased in the end and left them to get to know one another.
They talked for a long time interrupted only by a young woman who came in bearing a tea tray. Naomi explained how disappointed she had been that her Mr Weird did not come back from the US but that a job nearer home had come up and she'd taken it. He explained how he had dreamed of her ever since. She, however, did not explain how he had been dominating her thoughts ever since. He also did not explain how she had featured in his erotic fantasies.
After a while the conversation flagged, and Jack had to be certain that Naomi understood what kind of marriage she was committed to. He tentatively raised it and she reassured him. "I want you to be the boss. I wouldn't want any man, but Mrs Pendle understood that when looking, and you, well you are perfect."
"There was something else you needed to understand..."
"Ah yes" she said and put on a perfect imitation of Mrs Pendle's refined voice. "Your husband to be will wish to use the 'time-honoured' method of sometimes asserting his leadership."
"Doesn't worry you?"
"No, Mr Weird, I think we share similar views."
"So was your father strict and did he..."
"Is strict and yes he did, 'time-honoured' ways were fully used."
The 'is' caught his attention and he quickly asked, "When were you last treated like that then?"
She was not in the least discomforted. "Oh, years ago, I was in my teens I think and I am now twenty-five, but it hasn't actually gone away. I'm never quite sure what dad would do if I disobeyed him on something. Not that I would, I am such a boringly good girl."
"Good! Not sure about that, though. Mischief I'd say, but when did your dad last order you to do something?"
"Yesterday morning. I put on a new skirt which I was going to wear to church. Dad took one look and said, "Naomi, that skirt is to
o short."
"That is not an order."
"It is when dad says it so I went and changed. I'll probably have to take the skirt back."
"You're winding me up, young lady, but don't worry, you're safe."
She laughed. "Ask my dad when you meet him - I assume you are coming to ask his permission like a proper gentleman - and if I am telling stories you can spank me there and then."
"I will," he said firmly.
Meeting Naomi's parents was nerve-racking for Jack. He had to shake hands with her father but kiss her mother. Having been asked to call them Tom and Ruth, he did, and promptly asked Tom the truth about the skirt story.
"True, Jack, completely true. Why don't you go and get the skirt, Naomi, and we'll get an independent judgement."
She grinned and went up, coming back down wearing the skirt.
"Well, Jack, come on, give us an independent view. Am I right or an old fuddy-duddy?"
Naomi did a twirl and put on a serious expression. Jack felt pressure building. "Well, it is very attractive and you have the legs for it no doubt about that, but not a church article I would have thought, certainly not my church for sure."
Naomi seemed delighted with all this. "See, you can't spank me, I was telling the truth."
Naomi's parents laughed at this and Jack felt embarrassed, but they explained that Naomi had made it clear to them what sort of marriage she had agreed to after her briefing from Mrs Pendle. Her mother said, somewhat obliquely, "Naomi is a lovely girl but she needs to know where she stands." With that the pair left to "make some refreshments."
"See what a truthful girl I am, not a word of a lie, though I do like the skirt."
He felt she was teasing him and he decided to tease back. "Yes, no lie, but a lot of cheekiness there and disrespect to your poor father who only asked you to get the skirt, not wear it. A spanking matter I feel."
"But you wouldn't go so far now, would you?"
He wasn't sure how far to take it, but a little way would do no harm. "Well, I don't know, there was a lot of triumphalism in that, most unbecoming in a young woman." Having said that he pulled her towards where he sat and guided her over his lap. She wasn't in the least afraid. Doing so, though, rather pulled the skirt up so that some of her underwear was showing, confirming the skirt was too short.
