Notebooks of the Young Wife

NOTEBOOKS OF THE YOUNG WIFE

By

Tara Black

Notebooks of the Young Wife
first published in 2005 by

Chimera Books Ltd

www.chimerabooks.co.uk

Digital Edition converted and published by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

New Authors Welcome

This novel is fiction – in real life practice safe sex

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright © Tara Black

The right of Tara Black to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

‘In order for your bottom to be spanked you will need to remove your jacket and skirt. I shall begin over the knickers, but they are to come down after a while to complete the operation.’ I stopped speaking and watched the crimson-faced girl strip to her shirtsleeves and tug at her zip. When she was ready I took the clothes from her and placed them on a chair. I had one more thing to say.

‘You may have noticed that I have not lectured you on the conduct that has brought you here; nor shall I. It is none of my business. Nor yet do I intend to humiliate by taking you across my knee. The position provides close contact, which I think important, and is simply the most efficient for my purpose. That is to cause you the pain of acquiring a very sore behind – one more tender than it may be possible for you at this point to imagine. Right. Enough of words; let’s get down to business.’

Joanna Heathcote was her name before she married Sir Montague Everett not long after the death of his first wife in 1727. Her eighteen years against his fifty was no doubt the occasion for gossip but she was, it seems, devoted, and soon with him in thrall to the latest sexual sport of eighteenth-century England. Neighbouring tongues would have had plenty to wag about had it been known that the young mistress was embarked on a meticulous catalogue of their activities in the rather arch contemporary style. She referred to the opus as
Commentaria Perversa
, and it hardly takes a Latin scholar to decipher the title. Not that we knew of the project as such from the start; in fact there were very few who suspected the existence of so thorough an effort, and from a
woman
at that. But getting our hands on more than a few choice morsels of the thing, that was something else. However, if I’m going to tell this story, I’d better go back and start at the beginning.

That would have to be when Judith delivered the package from the Archive, an event that is now – the gods save us – almost a whole year ago. It was a Saturday morning in May and the spring air must have got to me – rising sap and all that. While I didn’t exactly plan it that way, I was rather deeply involved with our secretary when the buzzer went to announce her arrival. Well, to be more precise,
he
was the one in deep. Right up to his balls in my arse. I knew that because they were banging against me as he ground my hips into the desk. The intercom was only inches from my face; the question was what to say into it. I could have asked her to wait in the entrance lobby for the short time needed to finish the job, but I didn’t. A demon had hold of me that day, for I stuck a finger on the control and burbled into the microphone that she was to come straight on through.

To spring such a scene on a close acquaintance would have been naughty, but Ms Wilson and I had never met. For some moments, as Dominic did a disappearing act and I hauled up my jeans, I thought I’d gone too far. The mutual introductions were decidedly awkward, but then I started wittering about not giving the wrong impression, I hoped, since I was of her own predominantly lesbian persuasion and things seemed to gel. In no time we were settled amicably in my den with a dram and a pot of freshly ground Java. To my mind, a spot of buggery and a dash of malt whisky is the perfect prescription for starting the weekend off on the right track.

The goods that it had been thought unwise to entrust to the postal system consisted of a batch of CDs, whose innocent exteriors hid evidence of the far-from-innocent activities of many of those laughably known as ‘the great and the good’. A right pervy bunch, as clip after graphic clip left the viewer in no doubt. Just like me, and just like Judith, though with one crucial difference:
we
weren’t sitting in judgement on what others did or attempting to censor sexual materials. Some of
them
certainly were, with an agenda that included curtailing the resources I had then so recently been put in charge of. But they had already met resistance and were going to encounter more of the same. For I had no compunction in playing dirty.

Quite appropriate as it happens, since that’s what I was dealing with for a living: dirty books. Still do, in fact.
The
dirty books, one might say, since they are the ones that form part of our national fabric. Yes, the British Library has, over the years, built up a stockpile of erotic writing that is, as far as we are aware, unrivalled in its scope and depth. People know about what’s called The Private Case, which used to be held at the British Museum and is open to (cough)
bona fide
researchers. But that consists mainly of two, albeit large, bequests; what I preside over is more, much more. There is a full section of ‘Rare’ Books – Thomas Bowdler’s spirit lives yet – that is housed in the new complex. Or rather,
not
in it, but across a tree-lined street at the back in two terrace houses converted for the purpose. Says it all, really.

I’ve been told I shouldn’t complain. Surely to have a young(ish) woman at the tiller in such a field is an achievement, isn’t it? Well, I beg to differ. Just cast an eye over what’s been coming out in this country and in the States in the past few years and you’ll see the authors are all female. Ninety percent, anyway, and they’re doing all the best stuff. I suppose it’s something to have penetrated, so to speak, what used to be an entirely male preserve
here
, but then there were special circumstances. My predecessor was a man of, shall we say, the old school, engaged in all manner of shady deals and backhanders. One in particular, with the dodgy German-Czech outfit known as The Program, lost us two quite irreplaceable eighteenth-century editions. When this all came to light it must have seemed like time for a new broom, and there was I waiting in the wings with a DPhil plus a whole decade of squeaky-clean service in the ivory tower.

So that was it: Dr Jane Barrett-Greene was appointed Keeper of Rare Books and the collection acquired a new figurehead. But my job isn’t public relations, which is just as well since I have neither the looks nor the aptitude for it. No, I have been blessed with a blonde bombshell of a PA to fend off the sweaty hacks from the redtops should scandal threaten to break. I am no match for Judith in that department – few are – which brings me back to her visit and the start of my story.

After we had chortled over a few of the clips and swallowed more whisky, talk turned to the new premises in Soho. While she’d been frolicking there with the best, as befits one barely into her twenties, it seemed there was a strong pull to one girl in particular. Playing therapist, I soon learned that the conflict was a recurring feature in Judith’s life, though it had come this time to a crux. She was, in short, resolved on settling down but was having a deal of trouble resisting the temptations that appeared at every turn. Well, I’m afraid to say that I seized my chance and spun her a yarn about my stepmother’s cane. I don’t mean it was invention (indeed those events get a reprise in what is to come) only that I angled its telling to the needs of the occasion. In effect I drew a lesson from the taming of my wild youth that ‘paying’ for ones ‘sins’ could help draw a line under the past and allow one to move forward.

She looked unconvinced, so I produced the instrument and passed it over for inspection. Constructed from a core of synthetic resin bonded into a hard rubber sheath, it was both denser and more flexible than the standard article. As these qualities became apparent in her handling of it, I could see Judith’s mind working. Capital! She was a woman after my own heart, drawn to the memorable experience such a weapon could provide.

‘As you see fit,’ she said, echoing the words I’d quoted to her, and bowed her head. I told her it would be twelve and asked her to place an upright chair in the centre of the room. She went over it, feet apart and back arched in the manner of the true devotee, and gripped the legs low down on the far side. The posture thrust the tightly sheathed buttocks into prominence and the high line of a thong made it plain there was no intrusive underwear. And what buttocks they were! For a young woman she had acquired a formidable reputation as a stalwart under the rod, and was blessed with the bodily resources to support it. The pulse was thudding in my temples as I flexed my black implement and studied the target area being presented. The fleshy mounds were well dimpled and of a full roundness that gave an overhang at the tops of the thighs despite the bent position. It was there I would land the final cuts, I decided, and raised the cane high above my head.

It was a beating that stays with me to this day; a classic seat-of-the-pants affair, though I doubt there was a schoolboy presented the equal of that arse to his housemaster. Each stroke left its mark imprinted on the cloth, and the light that fell across the scene from the window threw into relief the rising welts. Judith made not a sound, though I drew from her some sharp intakes of breath, and when I had done, the cool formality of the handshake could not quite conceal the effort that went into it. I would have liked nothing better than to peel off the trousers and apply remedial treatment of the most intimate kind, but to do so would have betrayed the whole point of the exercise. Besides, I could see that there was a sort of glow about her as if the cane had communicated directly with the moral sense we had spoken of, and with that in the air she took her leave.

We have remained in contact, though not of a disciplinary kind, and she is still living with her partner. I like to think I did my bit to further that outcome.

Well, Judith may have made an exit with head in the clouds, but I was left severely randy. There was nothing for it but to reactivate the secretarial organ for a much needed clitoral workout. What would I do without him? I remember wondering. Then it was only after I was stretched lazily out back in the den that I found the envelope nestling in the package that had brought our precious discs. It was addressed simply to ‘Jane’, so I took out and unfolded the crisp sheet of headed paper inscribed in Samantha’s bold hand, and what she’d written brought me wide-awake at once.

Did you hear that Monty has pegged it
?

Not before time, it might be said.

I’m told the estate is to be split up so there could be rich pickings if we move on the matter. Phone me
.

In his prime Sir Montague Everett had been a chip off the old family block. While any kind of sexual excess was on the agenda – and his efforts became more bizarrely creative with advancing age – he took after the ancestor and namesake we’ve already met, who had been caught up in the general enthusiasm for flagellation that overtook the aristocracy. I’m speaking loosely, of course: to imply a craze for the rod is to overstate things a little. What we do know is that schoolmasters were keen on chastising their pupils and masters their servants, especially if young and pretty. At the time, too, there was a surge in erotic writing that features the birch in particular as a sex aid whose application causes ladies to faint from sheer voluptuousness and gentlemen to acquire a ‘yard’ so virile their ardour could scarcely be quenched.

Lip-smacking stuff, and we have some fine examples on our shelves. But there are serious gaps in the collection, and what makes it worse is that we know what many of them are. For example, a source from the mid-century enthuses about the several manuals that supersede the
Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs
(1718), and condemns it as being of doubtful accuracy and limited compass. That is a volume we possess, in no less than three variant editions, but having been critically informed, one’s perusal of them is an unsatisfactory affair, spoiled by hankering after the superior successors that are missing. The country house that has accumulated a library over the centuries is just the place where such items might be found, so the news was exciting.

As a sometime dominatrix with rooms in the capital, Samantha’s extensive contacts have led us to come to an ‘arrangement’. How it works is that we give up a few cherries in return for being alerted to possible sources of material. The Nemesis Archive she runs – as the severely titled
Miss
James with her deputy Judith – is devoted to the chronicling of aberrant desire among women, and if there is even a whiff of male engagement in the thing it is usually declined. Now I have to say that an engorged penis onstage, strictly under female control of course, rather heightens the proceedings to my way of thinking. But there you go; each to her own. The outcome is that the bulk of any books or papers we get to inspect by this deal can be snaffled up for The Library. With a capital L. And those we agree to relinquish will be available for consultation at the Archive itself by scholars dedicated enough to journey the sixty-odd miles north.

For the time being I was obliged to curb my impatience: it was a Saturday and the redoubtable lady would not be available until the Archive opened for business on the Monday morning. Fortunately there was something else to occupy my mind that day. An appointment had been made for one of the senior scholars of an exclusive school just a short taxi ride from our own establishment. It was the habit of the Principal to keep an eye on persistently ‘difficult’ girls that might benefit from what she termed ‘Dr Greene’s treatment’. A woman of my own persuasion in these matters, she had an uncanny ability to home in on one of a similar, if latent, disposition. Twice she’d called on my services in the space of some eight months, and her judgement in each case was spot on. So I was looking forward to the event with a degree of relish when Dominic’s head came round the door to announce that our visitors had arrived.

I followed him in to the office and greeted the rather elderly woman in black. Her manner, as before, gave the impression there was a bad smell under her nose she was trying to ignore.

‘Miss Marston, I’m pleased to see you again. And this is...?’

‘Miles of the fifth. Her taking in hand is long overdue, Dr Greene.’ The surnamed pupil was regarding her shoes with a scowl. That suited me fine; a pleasant smile and a cheery hello were hardly appropriate to the occasion.

‘Very well. Let’s get on with it.’ I extended my arm in the direction of the door I’d come through and waited until the reluctant eyes met mine. ‘After you.’ She took a couple of paces and the ageing mistress made to follow. I stopped her with a gesture, knowing she was a believer in corporal punishment
tout court
, without the special interest her senior and I brought to the subject.