The Bottom Line (27 page)

As we travelled back together she thanked me and asked whether I had decided when and where I would exact my revenge. I was slightly surprised since it had occurred to me that there was no way, with the tribunal over, that I could prove what Macy had agreed to, but I was careful not to let my surprise show. I gave her a date and time and told her that Frankie and Johnnie would need to be present as well, and that they would have to bring the slipper used on me.

‘I see,' she said, ‘so it's to be tit for tat, is it? And where will this take place?'

I smiled. ‘I'll let you know that later,' I said.

What I had in mind was far more severe than simple repayment, but I had a number of preparations to make in order to prepare for the scenario I'd devised. First of all, I borrowed a cap and hood from a college graduate, then I told Bev that I wanted her to be present at a special function and, finally, I went to a theatrical costumier and hired a thin cane, about two feet long and with a curved handle. I was amazed at the enjoyment I derived from this instrument, practicing on cushions and enjoying the noise as it swished through the air.

I chose the senior common room as the venue, since it was in college and was comfortable, but it was never used in the evening and was far enough away from the student accommodation to guarantee that we would not be overheard. I told Bev and Macy where we were to meet and made sure I was there first on the evening in question. I wore a straight skirt in dark grey, a white cashmere jumper and pair of black shoes with quite high heels. I stowed the rest of my equipment behind an armchair and waited.

Macy and her two stooges arrived next, Frankie handing over the slipper used on me earlier in the term. Macy was all for starting there and then, but I made them wait until Bev arrived, because I wanted somebody present who would ensure fair play. There was a second reason too, or at least I suspected there might be.

Once I had reminded everyone of my acceptance of Macy's condition and pointed out that I had a free hand otherwise, I told Macy to strip. She removed her top, unfastened her bra and dangled her heavy breasts - rather provocatively, I thought. I told her to strip completely, however, and I thought that a flicker of alarm crossed her face as she realised my revenge was going to be less predictable than she had planned. Nevertheless, she removed the rest of her clothing and stood there.

I told her to walk to within two feet of an armchair and to lean forward so that she was grasping the arm of the chair with both hands. Then I handed the slipper to Frankie.

‘Two strokes across the left cheek,' I said, ‘and at least as hard as she hit me or I'll ask Bev to repeat the strokes.' Frankie made as if to object, but the look on Bev's face was enough to silence her. She walked across to Macy, placed the slipper on Macy's left buttock, and then swung it hard, twice. Each blow brought a gasp from Macy, but nothing more.

‘You won't get her to squeal,' Frankie said, as she handed back the slipper.

‘We'll see,' I said, passing the weapon to Johnnie. ‘Your turn now,' I said, ‘on the other cheek, just as hard.'

Johnnie took the slipper with some alacrity, I thought, and lashed Macy viciously with it, but the response was just the same - a gasp as each blow landed but nothing more. I told Macy that she could stand up.

‘That's my treatment returned,' I told her. ‘Now comes the punishment proper.' I told Frankie to take two cushions and place them on the sturdy coffee table in the middle of the room. Then I motioned to Macy to climb onto the table, her knees resting on one cushion and her forearms on the other, so that her bottom was thrust into the air, the skin as taut as possible.

‘Now stay like that,' I told her, ‘while I get ready.'

I retrieved the gown, cap and hood from their hiding place and put them on. Bev looked amused but the other two remained expressionless. Then I went back to the armchair and retrieved the cane. This time it was Bev who gasped, while Frankie and Johnnie simply stood there, mouths agape. I walked round the coffee table so that, by looking upwards, Macy could see me.

‘Right, Macy,' I said quietly, ‘time for the reckoning. You're going to get six of the best in true academic tradition. You can make as much noise as you like and you can wriggle about as much as you like but, after every stroke, you will return to the punishment position without being told. Is that understood?'

She took a deep breath. ‘Understood.'

I moved behind her and took a few practice swishes, relishing again the noise made by the cane. Of course practicing on a cushion could never be realistic and I had no idea how hard I could afford to hit her, so the first two strokes were rather tentative. Macy rode them well, jerking involuntarily as the cane landed and gasping a little more pronouncedly, but otherwise coping well. I stood a little further away, took another sighting and delivered the third stroke much harder. This time Macy screeched, jumped off the coffee table and clutched her bottom. She gave me a poisonous look but climbed back on without being told to and resumed her position.

The fourth and fifth strokes were equally hard but Macy knew now what to expect, and while she could not stop herself from screeching, she stayed on the table. I moved closer and inspected the damage. All three strokes had left a mark, a ridge with puffy skin on both sides and some mottling of the flesh where the top of the cane had landed. I smiled to myself and moved slowly back into position, suddenly aware of an increasing wetness in my crotch and of the friction to which my nipples were subject.

Then I laid the cane right across Macy's bottom, and told her to turn her head and look at me. ‘You'll remember this last stroke for a long time,' I warned her.

I wasted no time, but drew my arm right back and lashed her with the cane as hard as I could. Even as she screamed and scrabbled off the table I could see that I had actually broken the flesh with this last stroke. The earlier strokes were turning a yellowish-purple, and I could only imagine the range of colours that last one might produce.

For a moment I thought Frankie and Johnnie were going to attack me, but Macy held up a forbidding hand. Then she placed both hands on her injured flesh, thrust the famous breasts proudly forward and looked hard at me, but it was a good five minutes before she had recovered sufficiently to speak.

‘You've done a bloody good job there,' she acknowledged ruefully. ‘Now let's see a bit of that venom on the hockey field and you and I might both play for England one day.'

Slowly she put her clothes back on, and then leant on her two friends. I handed the slipper back to Frankie and they left without another word. Bev said something about going too, but I motioned her to stay.

I removed my gown, cap and hood and threw them into a chair. Then I peeled off my cashmere jumper as Bev stared at me without saying a word. When my skirt followed she started to remonstrate, clearly thinking there was perhaps to be further punishment, but I cut her short.

Then I took off my bra and walked towards her. ‘My nipples are so stiff they're positively painful,' I told her. ‘So I thought you might like to kiss them better.'

 

 

 

I suppose it began with the little advert pushed through my letterbox. It offered regular gardening services and invited me to phone Darren. If it had said Darren
who
I don't know whether I would have called at all.

And I suppose that takes me back several years, to the appearance in my GSCE English set of Darren Donovan, an amiable youth but one not over-endowed with grey matter, certainly not suited to Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and several twentieth century poets. Occasionally his gormlessness would irritate me and I would rap the back of his hand with one of the textbooks, but he would just grin and say ‘Sorry, Miss', so it was impossible to feel cross with him.

Even that wasn't really the first significant thing that linked me to Darren: no! It was his first use of my rather unkind, though wholly accurate, nickname. Of course, kids nearly always give teachers nicknames and, in some ways, it's a compliment. The really unpopular teachers are the ones that never have nicknames. Once they'd found out that my name was Olive, then I got Olive Oil, principally because my round, rather moon-like face was topped off in those days by a pair of specs that made me look even more like Popeye's girlfriend.

I could put up with that: after all, I'd had the same name at university from the girls in my hall of residence. But I don't know where the additional words came from, I don't know what it was in me that prompted some bright spark to add Extra Virgin at the front, and I certainly don't know which juvenile delinquent with a warped sense of humour then shortened it to EV, which inevitably became Evie.

What I do know is that it was Darren who first used the name to my face. He'd left my class, my school and - I must have thought - my life a couple of years earlier, when I bumped into him, literally and accidentally, in the shopping arcade and he said without thinking, ‘Sorry, Evie.'

Because I hadn't heard the nickname before I didn't understand at first. I think he was a little embarrassed at having blurted it out and he certainly didn't intend to explain where it came from, nor did I then make the connection. It took a few days of asking around at school, a few days when my colleagues were generally evasive, when they told me it was a sign of affection, that it probably had no traceable origin, when they told me to forget all about Darren and the name. But, of course, once you've latched on to something like that it starts bugging you, and I eventually discovered that Evie meant EV, which stood for Extra Virgin, so that I was really Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Popeye's girlfriend, in other words, but with no real experience of one of the great mysteries of life.

What hurt most was that I knew it was true. I was a virgin and thought I would almost certainly remain one. I wasn't a lesbian and had no difficulty in talking to men, whose company I generally enjoyed, but company was enough. I'd had boyfriends at school and university but they were never satisfied with being just friends. I didn't mind the occasional affectionate kiss, but the kisses always got longer, firmer and, I suppose, more passionate. The very first boy I went out with, Adrian, put his hand on my breast while he was kissing me and I never went out with him again, although I liked him quite a lot.

And so it went on. I did rather emphasis the lunar shape of my face in those early days but I had quite a good figure (or so I was told), people seemed to be at ease with me and I was often invited on little trips. If I was never immodest, I wasn't prudish either. When I moved to my first teaching post I joined a swimming club, for example, and was quite startled to find that the ladies' changing area was an open space with pegs but no closed cubicles. The other members of the club seemed not to mind stripping off so I did likewise and, here again, one or two of them told me (once we were safely dressed again) that I had a nice body.

Yet sex never appealed to me, mainly because it seemed so messy. I knew all about it and I found no difficulty in teaching literature from some of the raunchier texts that were politically correct and almost entirely devoid of literary merit. It simply didn't relate to me at all. When the giggly girls - and with increasing frequency it was the girls - asked me to explain some sexual reference or innuendo, I could always do it, yet it all belonged to another world, rather like reading
Vogue
or
Cosmopolitan
and knowing that the Hampstead set at which such magazines were aimed were an alien race compared with myself - and almost all my colleagues.

It wasn't difficult to come by any information that one wished to have, nor to see examples of the infinite variety of sexual activity, once one had access to digital television. Occasionally I would surf the channels late in the evening and come across something I was tempted to watch. While I never looked specifically for soft porn, explicit scenes in a film rarely caused me to turn off or to switch channels. So there you have it: a virgin teacher with a very broad second-hand knowledge and a reasonably open mind: and that's how it would probably have remained, had Darren not reappeared.

I was living in a small detached house with a pocket handkerchief front garden and a much larger back garden. The previous owners had landscaped it very nicely, spent a lot of money on it and left it in excellent condition, but I have to admit I saw gardens as places to sit in on a really hot day. I never really saw much point in ‘doing the garden' as my friends put it. The result was that, while I regularly mowed the lawn and tidied the borders the garden began to lose its cared-for look.

It was this that made me read the slip of paper more carefully. It offered a range of gardening services from the one-off felling or pruning of trees to regular visits for more routine work. I decided to phone Darren and see what it would cost to restore the garden to its former prettiness and keep it that way. I didn't recognise his voice on the phone and he didn't give his surname, but we arranged for him to come and have a look on the following Saturday morning.

I heard a vehicle draw up and went to the door. In front of me stood a tall, powerfully built young man in his twenties, whom I didn't recognise at first, but he recognised me all right.