The Carrot and the Stick (23 page)

‘Is that your report?' Richard asked.

‘Yes,' Natasha replied. ‘I wrote it today when I got back. I used Beth's computer at home. I had to compile it in a hurry, so there are probably lots of mistakes.' She didn't add that Beth had helped her with the writing, lay out and presentation, even helping her print the report and put it neatly into a folder.

She stood up. ‘I'll leave it with you,' she said, reaching to put the folder on his desk.

‘Not so fast,' Richard said. ‘We are all here. There is no hurry. I would like you to read it.'

Natasha, taken aback, resumed her seat, still clutching the folder. ‘I'm not very good at reading aloud.'

‘If you want a job here you'll find you have to speak in public,' Richard said, not too unkindly. ‘You're among friends now, so it will be good practice for you. But before you start, perhaps you'll pour all three of us a drink.'

Natasha busied herself with bottles and glasses at the sideboard, trying not to look at the object lying on its surface until she had to move it out of the way. She pushed at it with tentative fingers, telling herself it was simply a piece of wood, not a cane. Beth, watching but not helping her friend, noticed the smile play around Richard's lips as he observed Natasha's hesitancy.

When all three had their drinks, Natasha resumed her seat and opened the folder. Richard nodded and she began to read aloud in a light, girlish voice.

 

‘Tuesday, August 3.

‘Arrived by taxi mid-afternoon. Big house, very beautiful. The central section dates back to sixteenth century. Enormous garden, complete with swimming pool.

‘Mrs Cross very gracious, tells me to call her Helen. Tea together on the veranda followed by a walk around the grounds. Helen talks about purpose of visit. Says she was raised in a very moral home, turpitude was severely punished. (Looked up turpitude later in the library. It means baseness, depravity, vileness.) Helen says young women should learn obedience and self-discipline in an old-fashioned way, that infractions should be dealt with severely, a lesson she had learned at the hands of her father. Not certain I agree, not entirely certain what she meant, but kept silent.

‘Helen says that she had heard from Richard that I had a tendency to be “light-fingered”, and was an example of such turpitude. Her father would have been most severe. Helen says the means never justifies the end. Must think about that. Helen says deceit is always destructive but most destructive when we deceive ourselves. She says the nuns who used to live in the house centuries before when it was a convent, used to flog themselves and each other to purify their spirits and that it was good for them. She calls it self-flagellation. I say I bet it was the monks who flogged the nuns, but Helen is not amused. She says I need purification.

‘We sit under a huge oak tree in the garden and she asks me about myself. She is very easy to talk to. I tell her about modelling, how I am fed up with it and want a more demanding career. She asks me about my family and my childhood. I tell her about my time as a teenager in the hostel, how I was frequently being punished. She puts her arms around me and asks for the details. I sit on the grass with my head on her lap and she strokes my hair as I tell her exactly what happened to me and how unhappy I was.'

 

‘Excuse me interrupting, Natasha,' Richard said, ‘but this is news to me.' He turned to Beth. ‘Did you know about her time in a home?'

Beth nodded, and Richard turned again to Natasha. ‘Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me about it when you've finished your report. Now continue.'

 

‘We make supper together in the big kitchen. It is lovely. New potatoes, cold meats and salad, followed by strawberries freshly picked from the garden with a sauce of crushed raspberries and cream. Perfect. Afterwards Helen shows me the library. So many books and documents. She finds some books that are more than a hundred years old, maybe two hundred, about how life used to be in the convent. I think they will be boring, but they are not. In fact, they are quite naughty. There are pictures; Helen calls them plates, under sheets of tracing paper. Some of them show nuns being whipped. We giggle a lot but I feel quite sorry for them.

‘Helen says it is time for bed as I have a hard day ahead of me tomorrow. She sends me upstairs for a bath. It is an enormous old-fashioned tub, and I feel as if I'm swimming, not bathing. When I'm up to my neck in water, Helen comes in and sits down on a bath stool. We talk again about my childhood and Helen says what I must have missed most, not having a proper mother, was bath time and bedtime. I am quite touched when she makes me wash well behind my ears and between my legs. When I stand up she wraps me in a large warm towel and helps me out of the bath. Helen is a strong woman. She is beautiful and the opposite of me, with a voluptuous figure.

‘In the bedroom, a lovely light and airy room, she makes me lie naked on the bed while she powders me like a baby. I am not at all embarrassed in front of her; she does it all so naturally. First she powders my front, my armpits, my breasts, my stomach and lower parts. Then she makes me turn over and she powders my back. She runs her hands over and around my bottom for so long that I am almost hypnotised by it. She says she can understand why the man in the hostel spent so much time looking at my bottom because it is beautiful. As she talks, she rubs the powder over my bottom and between my legs. Her fingers touch me quite intimately but I am too dreamy to object. To be truthful, I do not want to object, I want it to go on. I hear her say that tomorrow the lessons in unquestioning obedience start, but I am listening not to her voice but to her hands. She is a beautiful woman. I think I am a little bit in love with her.'

 

Richard snorted derisively, but Natasha ignored him and continued to read.

 

‘Wednesday, August 4.

‘Mrs Cross can be so cruel. I am awoken by her calls from the bathroom. I rush to her in my pyjamas and find her up to her neck in soapsuds. Then I say good morning and she replies, “Mrs Cross to you, girl. Now wash me”. She stands up in the tub like Aphrodite rising from the sea. Her figure is as nice as I knew it would be. She makes me wash every inch of her, some areas, the areas between her legs, over and over again. I am soaked. Then I have to dry her. She sits on the bath stool and opens her legs for me so that I may dry in between. She says she always thought that a woman's sex looks like a ripe fruit, a fig maybe. I agree to be polite. “In that case”, she says, “why don't you taste it?”. I decline politely. Then she says that I am going to learn my first lesson, that an invitation from her is an order. She makes me remove my wet pyjama trousers and lie over her lap. She spanks my bare bottom hard. It stings like anything. As she is spanking me, she tells me that before the day is out I shall taste her forbidden fruit. In the meantime, my bottom will be severely chastised, that Richard Cross expects nothing less.'

 

At this point, a blushing Natasha stopped reading aloud and glanced at Richard, before reaching for her drink to conceal her confusion. Richard nodded. ‘My wife was correct,' he said. ‘How did you feel being spanked?'

‘Like a teenager,' Natasha replied. ‘Humiliated. Embarrassed.'

Richard nodded again. ‘Details, girl. I told you I want all the details. Continue.'

Natasha replaced her glass on the windowsill and resumed reading.

 

‘When the spanking is over, Mrs Cross tells me to take off my pyjama jacket so that I am naked and to wait for her. In the meantime I should clean the bathroom. She takes ages getting dressed so I have time to make the bathroom really clean. When she returns she is carrying a cane and an apron. She throws the apron to me and tells me to put it on. When I protest that I need my clothes, she says the apron is the only clothing I am permitted. I put it on. It covers my front, just, my breasts and my tummy, but from behind I am bare. I have already inspected myself in the bathroom mirror and I know that my bottom is red. Now I must walk around with it exposed.

‘Together we go to the kitchen, Mrs Cross never letting go of the cane. I have to make breakfast for both of us. Luckily she wants nothing fried; I was worried that I might burn myself. But when I drop a cup, although it does not break, she lashes the cane across my sore bottom as I stoop to pick it up. I want to cry but I am determined not to give her that satisfaction. In fact the longer the morning goes on, and the more I am caned, the more it becomes a battle for me to show that I don't care. I see it as a battle of wills between me and the cane, a battle I am determined to win.'

 

Natasha looked up at Richard, her chin high and defiance in her eyes, as if implying it was him she was fighting. He said nothing but nodded encouragingly.

Her voice broke a little as she spoke to him. ‘You said you wanted the facts, just the facts. I hope you don't mind that occasionally I put in my opinion.'

‘As so long as it is valid,' he replied.

 

‘I don't see the point of this. What is cleaning the house in the nude teaching me? Being thrashed like a convict... what has this to do with a career, with advertising? I clean virtually every room downstairs with Mrs Cross following my every footstep and lashing me whenever I miss a speck of dust. I hate it. If it were not for Beth, I would leave right now. I am not a fighter; I am a weeper. I break down in tears in the library and Mrs Cross softens for a moment. She rubs soothing oil on my buttocks that helps with the pain. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror, my bottom looks like a plum, polished and ready for sale on a market stall, purple and glowing. I am so ashamed.

‘She leaves me alone after that for a while. I have to scrub the stone passage leading from the backdoor to the scullery. I have been on my knees with a bucket and scrubbing brush for a good ten minutes when I feel a draft around my nether regions. I look over my shoulder to find the door open and a figure standing in the doorway, a man who is staring at me. He takes a filthy pipe out of his mouth and says, “In the country, that be what we calls an invitation”. The brute was referring to my bottom. I stand up and slam the door; thankful my nakedness is fairly well covered from the front. But from that moment on, I feel always his eyes are upon me, even though he is not to be seen.

‘At lunchtime, Mrs Cross says lesson one is over. She allows me to get dressed. She gives me a white T-shirt and shorts and white tennis shoes, no underwear or socks. The T-shirt is very tight, as are the shorts, but after my near-nakedness of the morning they feel like a suit of armour. Mrs Cross says I must work in the garden in the afternoon under the supervision of the gardener, Ned Gudgeon. I fantasise about the gardener being young and good-looking but when I meet him I find he is the man who was looking at me in the morning, the man who saw me nearly naked. He is about fifty, filthy dirty and unshaven. He wears a slouch hat, old clothes and a leather apron. I could not tell you the colour of any one garment; they were all the same muddy brown.

‘I like gardening normally but I don't enjoy the afternoon. Every chore seems to involve not only Gudgeon's supervision but also his assistance. When I rake the mown grass he stands behind me and holds my hands, holding the rake. He presses himself up against me and I can smell him. Even through the leather apron I can feel the pig is aroused. He makes me climb the apple trees to remove rotten fruit, and he stands beneath me. As I lift one leg or another to climb, I know that my shorts hide nothing. If he puts up a hand to help me it is always indecently placed. When I pick the raspberries, he reaches for my breasts, saying, “Here be a fine one, nice and ripe”, and chuckling at his own pathetic joke. I feel like braining him with a spade. Perhaps I shall.

‘When I finally go in, there are muddy paw prints on my shorts between my legs and on my buttocks, and on my T-shirt over my breasts. I feel as filthy as he looks. “I can see Gudgeon appreciated your assistance”, Mrs Cross says.

‘I cannot wait to strip off my clothes. When I am in the bath, Mrs Cross comes in again. She babies me. She makes me stand up in the water while she washes me all over. I cannot help feeling aroused. Again I lie over her lap as she pats me dry and puts more oil on my poor bottom and between my legs. I can feel I am already wet there - not from bath water or oil - from my own juices. She leads me to her bed, puts me in it and then undresses in front of me. We lie together for a long time, with me nuzzling her breasts and her hand stroking my bottom. Gradually I feel her pushing my head down her body, to her belly and then to her sex. She opens her legs for me, and puts her thighs on my shoulders. “The forbidden fruit”, she says. “Enjoy it. Eat it nice and slowly”.

‘Later we have a cold supper in bed together. For pudding there is a raspberry mousse. We eat it not from plates, but she licks it off my bottom; she says it has soothing qualities and will help the bruises. I lick it from that part of her anatomy that most resembles it in colour. I think I love Mrs Cross.'

 

‘You can't make up your mind, can you?' Richard said.

Natasha shook her head. ‘She's a very unusual woman.'

‘She was unusually severe with me,' Beth replied ruefully, as Natasha took another sip of her drink and resumed reading.