Notebooks of the Young Wife (18 page)

The promised lunch was a solitary one, for while two places were laid as on the earlier occasion, Sibyl Metzger did not appear. In her absence I was able to indulge without hindrance the appetite generated by the recent events, and I had no sooner swallowed the last mouthful of deliciously creamy quiche than there was a tap on the door.

‘Entrez,’ I called, pushing my plate aside and leaning back, glass in hand. The suspicion – hope, rather – that instantly formed in my mind was confirmed when the repentant one from the morning came in. I can’t say she was none the worse for her starring rôle on the frame: the face surrounded by those stunning locks was very pale, and under cover of loose, high-waisted pantaloons the movements of the hips were perceptibly cautious. But there seemed no hard feelings after the harsh treatment: she declined the offer of a seat with a gratifyingly wry smile, and the eyes were untroubled.

‘Dr Greene,’ she began, but I cut her short.

‘Jane, please, and I’ll call you Belle. With some significant corporal punishment between us the need for formality has passed.’

‘Well then, Jane, I have come to apologise for the game I played with your books.’ When I raised an eyebrow at the word ‘game’ she went on quickly. ‘Don’t think badly of me. I was unsure how much you knew and curious to see how long it would take you to track them down.’

‘Oh, I daresay all is forgiven.’ I made it sound airy, though I couldn’t help wondering how far I would have got without the boy’s help. It was fitting that he’d been closely involved in inflicting the penalty. ‘However...’ I let a pause lengthen until I had the eyes watching me closely ‘...however, I reserve the right for a further comeback. When you are back in London quite healed, I intend to put you across my knee and spank that delicious bottom red raw.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ It was delivered with a girlish pout that made me ache to carry out my threat at once. Then it occurred to me that there was something else necessary to complete our transaction.

‘Excellent. Now if you would be so good as to bring me the missing materials...’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ There was an odd look on the American’s face, and I was once more uneasily aware of the ground shifting under me. ‘You see, Madame has taken charge of them. Not ten minutes ago she told me that she wishes to have you collect the books in person this afternoon.’

No time was specified, so having learned where ‘Madame’ was to be found, I returned to the upstairs room we’d been given. It seemed only right that the boy should be in on the step that would conclude our mission, but there was no sign of him. Patience was never one of my virtues so I was already heading back down the passage when I was lucky enough to meet him at the top of the stone stair.

‘The Notebooks,’ I said, ‘must be collected. From and by order of the lady in charge. Coming?’

‘Yeah, course.’ Despite the words he didn’t look entirely happy, though kept mum until we entered the corridor with the director’s rooms at the end. Then he turned to me as we walked. ‘This boss, you didn’t meet her?’ I shook my head but he persisted. ‘Before, I mean.’ It was more or less what Sibyl Metzger had asked, and again I felt I was missing part of the picture.

‘Well no one’s told me her name. I had the idea they all went under pseudonyms anyway. Do you think she’s somebody I know?’

‘Bloody right. Heard them talking. Long time since.’

‘You mean someone from my past?’ But the question was to remain unanswered, for we’d reached the director’s door and at that very moment it sprang open. A girl pushed between us, head down, and lurched off the way we’d come, hands kneading buttocks beneath a grey skirt. A middle-aged woman in a white tunic came out, shaking her head.

‘
Oh, les jeunes! J’ai offris de calmer la douleur, mais...
’
She stopped waving the tube of ointment and looked us up and down. ‘
Ah, pardon
. You are the English visitors.
Entrez, Madame vous attend
.’ Inside there was a long bench seat opposite a padded table and a unit holding a variety of tubes and bottles. It was like the waiting room of a surgery and an examination area combined, except that all the treatments on offer from the ‘doctor’ were of a single, painful kind. All of a sudden I was beset by the conviction that our encounter was to be more than a simple returning of purloined documents, and the thought sent a shiver of apprehension through me. Then we were shown into the inner room where a figure stood outlined in a barred window that looked out to a distant rocky coast. But once she moved away into the light I had no longer any eye for the view. The hair was white, that was new, though the tight bun was unchanged, as were the strong lines of the face. Twenty years fell away in an instant and my stomach churned: the acting head of the Rigorists was Madame Mariselle, once installed briefly and traumatically as my resident stepmother.

‘Madame,’ I managed to croak, while attempting to get a grip on my whirling emotions.

‘Jane. You are looking well, and little changed by the passage of time. And this is your young friend – they tell me he is popular in the kitchen.’ She moved closer and studied him with seeming approval, then pointed the length of rattan she was holding at his trousers. ‘I should like these down in order to make an inspection.’

She’d lost none of the dominating presence that had inscribed itself on my mind in those teenage years, and the lad complied without my offering even the feeblest of objections. While red-faced, he was not too discomfited to be sporting a semi-erection that soon filled out when Madame Mariselle stroked its underside with the tip of her cane. With the smallest of smiles at the effect of her action she ordered him to bend. Still he showed no reluctance, grabbing his ankles and holding the position while she tested the resilience of the hindquarters with her instrument.

‘You may stand up and dress yourself. A sound beating would do you a power of good, boy, and you have the behind to take it. I hope you will give me that pleasure before you leave us. But now to the matter of the writings of the young eighteenth-century wife. Her
Commentaria
are a treasure indeed, one which prompts me to ask if I shall be handing them to a worthy recipient.’

Again I was reduced to silence, and she lost no time in developing her point.

‘What impresses about the writer of these is that she is ever in the middle of things. She must experience it all for herself, at once,
tu comprends
? Only then will she inflict anything on another. Whereas, what I remember of your case, Jane, is rather different. You were quite ready then to impose your will without much consideration for its effects. I am asking you now, is that yet so?’

‘Well, I...’ The sentence ground to a halt as I struggled in my mind to rebut the accusation.
Uxor
was, from what little I knew that far, disposed to offer herself up to heightened experience, in a very active way of course, but nonetheless as a form of submission. Whereas I had from the start found the greatest pleasure in being the one in control. But in this there was nothing discreditable: it was the age-old couple of sadism-masochism, essential in practice if not in a neat jigsaw of theory. However, the idea that I was simply insensitive to the needs of others was a conclusion that had me beginning to seethe inside. Madame Mariselle was watching with, I suddenly saw, a degree of amusement.

‘Aha,’ she cried, ‘it is good to see you rise to the bait. The half-truth that cuts to the quick. But it must be remembered there is truth in it. Come, Jane, let me ask you a specific question. You will have carried out a punishment not very long ago, a severe one.
C’est vrai
?’ For a moment I could think only of the boy and spankings, then it came to me. Ama.

‘Yes, I did, but she was willing. More than willing, in fact: she required it of me.’

‘I am sure it was just as you report. That is not my point. Now you will tell me the details, please: the implement, the number of strokes, and the use of any special conditions.’ I hesitated, and then realised I had lost my chance to dissemble. Only the truth would carry conviction and I gave her what she wanted with a horrid suspicion of where it was all leading.

‘Very well, I shall give you the opportunity to show your good faith in this matter. The correct sadist has a duty to know at first hand what she does, is it not so?
Bon
. I possess the instrument of which you speak and the strength of arm to use it; we need only an item of clothing and we are there. So what do you say, Jane?’

What could I say? I’d been manoeuvred into a corner from which there was only one honourable exit, and it was going to be a painful one. There was nothing for it but to bite the bullet, and I bowed my head with what grace I could muster.

‘Excellent. You may move the horse out from the wall.’ While I did so she reached up to a high shelf and took down a long black rod that I recognised only too well from its rôle in my earlier life. Then she took from a drawer in the desk a pair of bottle-green knickers of a distinctly old-fashioned type. ‘For our business you will wear these only, though you may keep the shirt. Use the dressing room. When you are ready the boy will be so good as to remain there until we are finished.’

It took only moments to strip off my trousers, shoes and socks and pull the knickers up into place. They were of a thick serge cotton that clung snugly to my buttocks, but would hardly serve as protection against the thrashing to come. I looked at the boy and he looked glumly at me, but I guessed the thought of it would be arousing him just as it would me had the positions been reversed. So I smiled a smile I was far from feeling and squeezed his shoulder, before returning to what felt like an execution chamber. Madame Mariselle looked me up and down, flexing the cane with a half-smile that chilled my stomach. She was going to enjoy herself.

‘So twenty-four it shall be:
deux douzaines de coups
. You will be afterwards a little warm,
je crois
. There will be no need for the holding straps since you will show us a model of comportment,
n’est-ce pas
?’

I lowered myself onto the disciplinary apparatus with a sinking heart: an already bad situation had just taken a turn for the worse. At least a fastened body could distract from intolerable pain in a fight against its bonds; unrestrained it could only endure and suffer. I must endure and suffer: it was unthinkable to make an exhibition of oneself in front of Madame. I found a strut to hold between the front legs while I gripped the back end between my knees, and tried to mould myself into the padded surface. Twice behind me the instrument sliced the air as the wielder tested its feel, and the evil whirr made my insides contract. On the wall ahead hung a clock with its hands at almost twenty minutes past four; unless Madame were to draw the thing out, which had not been her way in the past, by the time they reached the half hour my ordeal would be over.

My shirt was lifted and folded up well into the small of my back, then fingers adjusted the underwear, smoothing out any wrinkles in the seat. I thought of the beautiful black mechanic whose stripes were to serve as the model for mine, and the wry amusement she would undoubtedly display at my situation made me resolve to acquit myself as well as I could. Then the space for such considerations was abruptly closed off. There was a swift movement at my back and a swishing impact that jerked my hips into the upholstered fabric under them. Two more in quick succession connected in like manner, and I was lifted by a glimmer of hope. While the mounting sting was bad, it wasn’t possessed of the atrociousness I’d been dreading.

But I was clutching at straws, as I should have known. Madame was just getting her eye in for the real beating that began with a grunt of effort, a thump of her tread on the floor and a jolt that knocked the breath out of me. And then the pain came: an impossible, unendurable burning that sent the muscles into shocked spasm. Had I air left in my lungs I should have shrieked. It is possible – nay, probable – that later I did and in full measure, though on that point, mercifully, memory fails me.

The next clear recollection is of coming out of a red haze to find the boy aiding my rise on trembling knees. As I wobbled, clutching his shoulder, there came the curt command: ‘Show.’ It was too cruel to have to offer for inspection buttocks that felt like so much molten lead, but I struggled dutifully to pull down the pants and step out of them.

‘It is enough,’ was the laconic response of dismissal, then the boy had a gown round me and was steering us out through the door. I don’t like to dwell on the image of the winsome lad with the woman who winced clumsily along at his side. Thankfully there was no one to witness the odd couple’s halting progress until eventually we were sequestered behind the locked door of our room.

Then it all happened very fast. The robe was whisked from me, pillows heaped on the bed and I was face down across them. I felt lips brush the traumatised flesh and a tongue that fleetingly licked before my legs were thrust apart and a hard shaft pushed impatiently at my vulva. In the wake of the rod I was wet and he sank to the hilt, thighs mashing into the throb of cauterised arse-cheeks. Our first fuck – brief, violent and unforgettable – ended as fast as it began in an explosion so fierce as to draw down over my consciousness a safety curtain of blackness and peace.

In the night I stirred to find the boy behind me again, and half-awake I moved with him to allow a second penetration. Thrusting slowly, a finger on my clitoris, he brought me to a climax that bore me up to a great height and rolled me out once more into the dark.