Spankers Gallery — April

An excellent story from Roué 17 with some lovely illustrations. Sadly the last in the Mr Dupont series.

The first part of this story appeared in Roué 12 under the title; ‘Oh to be in April…’, wherein Mr Dupont, teacher of pianoforte and other instruments, persuades young April’s mum that his cottage in the country would be a much safer place in which to pursue her studies than London in the autumn of 1939.

‘You be a good girl. April!’ says her mum. ‘There’s plenty of kids would give a lot for the chance Mr Dupont’s givin’ to you!’

‘An’ you make sure she don’t give no trouble, Mr Dupont! If she starts playin’ you up, you put a stick acrost ‘er backside!’

Mr Dupont takes April’s mum at her word, needless to say, and this second part of the story picks up the thread shortly after April’s birthday in the early summer of 1940, when a certain routine has become well established.

A pipe at this time of day was something looked forward to all afternoon. The tobacco well rubbed in the palm of the hand then fed into the bowl, moist and aromatic. Tamped down just enough, springing slightly under the thumb, then lit, three matches enough to get it going nicely if the pipe had been carefully filled.

He drew the smoke down the stem and let it out at the side of his mouth to curl up towards the ceiling in convoluted blue-grey spirals. The tobacco sizzes quietly, forming a layer of fine grey ash through which a red glow pulsed slow and bright with each luxuriating puff. Taking the pipe from between his teeth he couched it in his hand and let its warm, round smoothness lead him to the unhurried consideration of young April’s bottom, and in this contemplative frame of mind, to reflect upon the circumstances of her still being here in the early summer of 1940, more than six months after he had coaxed her mother into letting him take her daughter ‘to the country’ away from the threat of bombing in London.

She had come in order to continue her piano lessons under his tuition — this at least was the purpose so far as April’s mum had understood it — while his reasons would have appeared perhaps a little less respectable if placed under careful scrutiny. But scrutinised they had not been. It had seemed both reasonable and indeed most fortunate for April’s future prospects as a musician that getting away from the dangers of London could be so conveniently combined with the opportunity to carry on her studies under Mr Dupont’s guidance. His insistence that April’s bottom should continue in its role as ‘seat of learning’ during her stay with him had raised not an eyebrow — the ladies who had sent their daughters to him in Bethnal Green had regarded him and his reputation as a teacher so highly that the occasional smacked bottom of which their daughters complained seemed, in fact, perfectly sensible, considering the high standards achieved thereby.

April had been the first — indeed had been the only student for the first six months here — but then the notion that what had worked once might well work again — and again — had prompted him to renew his contact with the parents of others of those students who had come to him in London. He hadn’t set the fees too high, and April’s mum had done a wonderful job of recommending the scheme to other mums and dads whom she had known from the pre-war days in London. The upshot had been most satisfying. Five of his former pupils would be arriving early next week, packed off by parents eager to get their daughters away from the metropolis now that the summer had turned the threat of air raids into reality, and grateful besides that Mr Dupont had thought so highly of their daughters’ potential as to extend invitations to join what he now called his ‘Musical Academy’. That the girls might become ‘musical’ in more ways than one is something he didn’t stress, though certainly all the parents knew about his methods.

His pipe having gone out whilst he has been day-dreaming, Mr Dupont relights it fussily, prodding here and there in the bowl with the stump of the expended match until he is satisfied that it is properly alight this time. He deposits the matchstick in an ashtray on the small table at his elbow, then clicks the switch on the wireless.

April, who has been waiting with her accustomed obedience for the start of her afternoon piano practice stirs from her straight-backed posture and tilts her hips in a resigned slouch. Her buttocks quiver gently as she settles into the lopsided posture. Her white cotton knickers crease between her cheeks. The wireless fizzes reluctantly into life with the familiar voice of the news reader.

‘……..in the Channel today. The Ramsgate lifeboat went to the assistance of the vessel, and rescued eleven of the crew. Seven other crew members have yet to be accounted for. Aircraft of Fighter Command flew over two hundred sorties……..’

Surreptitiously, April slips a hand behind her and fiddles with the arrangement of her pants, plucking at the material with slim, nervous fingers.

‘……..claimed to have destroyed four enemy machines. One of our aircraft was lost off Dover. An Air Ministry spokesman said today that……..’

April’s knickers, newly arrived this week in a parcel from her mum, fit her no better than any of the old pairs do. Mum seems not to have realised that her daughter has filled out somewhat since she’s been away from home. While still just about big enough, the knickers are plumped out firmly by April’s irrepressible bum, the lack of room most evident across the crowns of the two cheeks, where the underlying swell pushes wilfully at the cotton and gives a clear idea of the vigorous resilience contained therein. April eases herself erect again, buttocks trembling demurely.

‘……..may be expected at any time. While there is no reason for undue alarm, gas masks should be kept readily available at all times……..’

Sunlight wanders in through the latticed window and kisses the bareness of her legs, outlining the contours and infiltrating the satiny interstice where the very tops of her inner thighs part just below her pants. She inclines her hips again, to the other side this time, and the interloping sunbeam winks out.

‘……..precautions. Leaflets will be readily available at main Post Offices and Civil Defence……..’

‘Your bottom got the fidgets, has it?’ enquiries Mr Dupont, his voice pleasantly paternal in tone and inflexion.

April’s hips level themselves instantly, springy buttocks bouncing again as she jerks to attention.

‘……..can be obtained from town halls……..’ click.

‘Sorry, Mr Dupont!’ Her knickers have slipped a fold into the division between her cheeks.

He glances at the clock ticking quietly above the mantelpiece.

‘Time we started, isn’t it?’

‘Er — yes — yes. Mr Dupont —.’

She gets her knickers down. They ‘shush’ softly over the pert pushiness of her bum. She leaves them clinging to her thighs with just the degree of inside-outness expected, not so low that they’ll slip down unprompted, but enough to clear the firm undercurve that the cane so likes to seek out. She pulls the elasticated lower hem of her blouse up well above waist height, baring the small of her back. Around her slim waist there is a piece of thin white ribbon, and from this ribbon a short length of white knicker-elastic runs down into the crease which divides her chubby buttocks. She stoops to pull the piano stool out from under the keyboard and a small silvery object discloses itself, half-hidden between her bum-cheeks.

She stands between the stool and the piano, waiting. The piano, as ever, is locked and the little key which will open it is attached to the dangling knicker-elastic and now nestles between her buttocks again, peeping out playfully.

Mr Dupont levers himself up from his chair and goes unhurriedly to a convenient position beside the girl, from which point he can slide a finger up between her buttocks and recover the key from its lodgement while slipping his other hand in from the front, between her dutifully parted thighs to take the key from behind and pass it on its elastic through the warm, moist tunnel so that, with an encouraging tug on the tether, he can very nearly insert the key into the keyboard lock. Very nearly, but not quite.

‘Eeee —!’ It’s that last couple of inches that tweaks a little squeak from April. With the elastic stretched tight underneath her, she has to bend her knees and dip her loins toward the lock to enable the key to be slipped into the keyhole. The catch ‘clonks’, the key is withdrawn, and then April finds herself teetering up on her toes as the elastic is pulled taut up against her tummy.

‘Ooh —!’ She squeezes her thighs together and has to thrust her hips lewdly forward as the elastic tightens.

‘Thank you,’ says Mr Dupont — and lets go of the key.

‘Ooh!’ It spatts against the inside of a thigh and then sneaks back through the soft tunnel, pulled by the elastic. April dives a hand between her legs and clutches at the tender place on her thigh — and by stooping slightly at the same time, sticks out behind her that most frequently abused part of her person and gets it slapped cheerfully by Mr Dupont’s hovering hand. She gives a startled squeal and jerks up straight, breasts bouncing brazenly almost under her teacher’s nose, while Mr Dupont raises the piano lid and takes up the cane which is lying upon the row of keys.

April’s childish pout at the appearance of this familiar instrument is ignored, and Mr Dupont nods to her to take her seat. Piano practice begins.

----//----

Forty minutes later, when the sound of an engine in the lane presages the arrival of those visitors whom Mr Dupont has been expecting, April is up on the piano stool for her fifth ‘touch of the stick’, as her teacher would describe it, and is understandably rather tearful. Mr Dupont has caned those exuberant buttocks of hers with his usual degree of finesse, every stroke carefully weighted so as to impart just the right amount of sting without raising anything more than the most superficial blemish on the skin of the girl’s cheeks, each adding to the cumulative effect of successive strokes and suffusing the plump undercurves of her bottom with a swathe of glowing scarlet. April strangles the bout of weeping which threatens to engulf her and gropes for her knickers, knowing that anyone coming up the path will see her kneeling on the stool through the window, but Mr Dupont stops her with, ‘Leave them where they are!’ Blushing furiously April slips her pants back down, having no need now to ask whom the visitor might be. If it were anyone but Mr Willis she would have been shushed away to the kitchen to tidy herself up and get into her skirt; but Mr Willis isn’t just anyone.

Trespassing upon his friendship with Mr Dupont, the portly arrival walks with exaggerated casualness across the neat lawn and peers in through the window. April is too ashamed to look at him, and folds her hands protectively across her front so that as little as possible of her semi-nakedness will be subject to his gaze. Mr Dupont meanwhile has abandoned his pupil and gone to open the front door. The face beyond the latticed panes absents itself, and April swallows nervously several times.

The new arrival greets the teacher with an unexpected nervous formality. Mr Dupont, while perfectly at ease himself, is in fact not entirely sure what is to be expected of him on this occasion, and he responds with like formality as insurance against misinterpreting the brief he has so far been given.

Lowering his voice for some reason best known to himself, Mr Willis confides the information that, ‘She’s in the car.’

Respecting his visitor’s apparent wish for discretion, Mr Dupont suggests quietly that he, ‘Bring her in then. But perhaps you could take her through the back gate — April’s in the middle of a lesson.’

‘Er — yes. Of course.’ Mr Willis hurries away down the path. Mr Dupont returns to the music room and takes up the cane again.

‘Where were we?’ he says. ‘Seven, was it? Or six?’

‘Ten —’, whispers April, cheating by one stroke.

‘Ten?’ queries her teacher.

‘Yes — I think so.’

‘Two more then, eh?’

‘Y-yes. Two more —’.

‘Come on then — let’s have that bottom of yours stuck out properly’.

‘Yes, Mr Dupont —’. April thrusts her buttocks out, hands slipping between her thighs where she is supposed to keep them firmly wedged to prevent her intercepting the cane should she be rash enough to try. The tender under-sweep of her cheeks presents the favoured part of her bum to the impatient cane.

Swhiiick!

It lands with painful accuracy across the plumpest parts of her bottom. She snatches her buttocks away with a jerk, and the little key dangling behind her flicks into the air and then bounces teasingly onto first one trembly cheek and then the other.

Out in the hall there is the sound of a door across the hallway opening and Mr Willis saying ‘Perhaps we’d better wait in here.’ April fights back a cry and forces her bottom to offer itself to the cane for another stroke.

‘Swhaack!’

The key dances in the sunlight again, and April can’t stifle a despairing whimper this time. Buttocks tweaking with the sting, she is left to calm herself down, though not to pull her knickers up just yet, while Mr Dupont deposits the cane on top of the piano and goes to welcome his visitors.

In the hall he pauses to straighten his bow tie, which he has taken to wearing as part of his accoutrement. He has come to know Albert Willis fairly well since taking up residence in the village. Albert is the manager of Bradley’s Bank, where he maintains an account. It is with Albert that he has discussed his plans for his Musical Academy, and Bradley’s Bank will be financing the venture at the outset until he has established the Academy successfully.

This arrangement had seemed rather less likely to come to fruition on a certain occasion a few months previously, when in the manner of bank managers in rural parts, and since he was passing the little cottage on his way home anyway, Albert had decided to call in on his customer to discuss a couple of points concerned with the intended financial arrangements. Getting no immediate answer to his knock at the front door, he had strolled across the lawn and peered in at the window, and had been shocked to find young April sprawled bare-bottomed over the piano top with cane marks plainly visible on her buttocks, and Mr Dupont raising the corrective instrument aloft in readiness for another stroke. The two men’s eyes had met through the window, and embarrassed confusion had enlivened the countenance of each. Albert had retreated hurriedly, leaving the teacher bemused and somewhat worried regarding the probable effects of the encounter on his standing at the bank.

A polite yet ominous summons to call upon the bank manager in his office a few days later had turned out to be not at all of the nature Mr Dupont had expected. He had left the bank with the details of the overdraft arrangement reconfirmed, and a tentative invitation extended to Albert to call round one evening for a drink. Realising that nothing would be lost if he treated Albert to a chance to sit-in on the tail end of April’s last lesson of the day, the girl’s ‘tail end’, knickerless of course and more than ordinarily squirmy thanks to a stingier-than-usual dose of the stick, had proved to be the very thing to encourage Albert to confess guardedly to a taste for voyeuristic opportunities of a disciplinary kind. He had become a frequent, if slightly embarrassed visitor to the music room, while April had often become a pink-cheeked tremble of humiliation as she and her animated bottom were put through their paces in front of him.

Albert’s predilections were no longer a secret — there was no doubt that he enjoyed the sight of swishy cane and bared bottom getting acquainted — but now he had asked Mr Dupont to take on an additional pupil. He had said only that the new pupil was a girl, leaving the teacher uncertain as to whether this new girl was intended as a candidate for the cane or was coming for nothing more than music lessons without the benefit of added encouragement to do well in her work. Even the girl’s relationship to Albert had yet to be established. A degree of circumspection in the forthcoming interview would clearly be the sensible course.

Having adjusted his tie while considering the best way to approach the situation, Mr Dupont crosses the hallway and enters the room where his new pupil awaits her introduction to her prospective musical mentor.

It is quite startling for him to discover that the girl sitting demurely on a straight-backed chair with her hands folded in her lap is instantly recognisable as one of the young cashiers at Bradley’s Bank! Albert rises to his feet, looking nervous and uncertain, and the girl takes her cue from him and stands up too.

‘Rachel —’ says Albert, introducing her, and the girl smiles timidly as her name is mentioned. ‘This is Mr Dupont.’

‘Good afternoon,’ says the teacher. ‘Ah — haven’t we met before, my dear?’

‘Yes — at the bank. I work behind the counter.’

She seems almost too young to have left school, now that he sees her outside the environment of the bank for the first time. She is no more than five feet tall, blonde and quite pretty in a country-girl way; warm, healthy cheeks and — now that she isn’t hiding behind a counter — instantly absorbing to the eye. She looks to have come straight from work, with a white high-necked blouse and straight charcoal grey skirt. Black shoes with little heels are nicely polished, and the trimness of her waist does a lot to interest the observer in the outsweep of her hips. She smiles shyly again, as if wanting to hide her awkwardness behind an endearing attempt to appear friendly. Albert hovers pathetically in the background, looking more uncomfortable by the minute. Mr Dupont decides that if Rachel has been delivered up to him with the intention that she should share April’s place across the top of the piano, she’ll find herself occupying it every bit as often as Miss Chubbycheeks across the hall, and no doubt about it!

Discretion being very much the order of the day however, the tutor keeps the conversation quite away from the matter of music room discipline and chats about the girl’s previous training in pianoforte while trying surreptitiously to define the connection between her and Albert.

At the end of a quarter of an hour the matter of Rachel’s musical education has been discussed and rediscussed to the point where Mr Dupont has run out of things to ask the girl, and still he has found no opportunity to slip in a word about what should be done should the girl prove to be in need of a little more encouragement than mere exhortation can provide. He begins to console himself with the thought that tonight he’ll invent some half-plausible reason why April should be sent to bed with her bottom freshly caned, the chastisement administered straight after her bath while her bum is still flushed from the hot water and the traces of her caning at the piano this afternoon are flowing warmly up under the cheeky sitting-down bits. It is at this point that he realises Rachel has stopped talking, and is sitting with her head lowered while tears plop onto the neat grey of her skirt.

Taken aback by this sudden demonstration of distress, Mr Dupont looks to Albert for enlightenment. Albert clears his throat huskily.

‘I dare say it’s the — er — the thought that she might not come up to standard. Up to your standards, I mean.’

‘Oh, I see —.’

‘And the thought that she might — um — might have to get ‘em down. Her pants, that is. Might have to get ‘em down for — well, you know. For the cane.’

A strangled splutter from young Rachel confirms that his is indeed the cause of her weepiness. She raises tear-rimmed eyes to her new tutor and stumbles out a plea for reassurance.

‘Ooh, please Mr Dupont — please say I won’t have to be caned! Please!’

The sun filters in through the window and catches her hair as she tosses an unruly strand away from her face, and the teacher feels the excitement rising inside him as he anticipates having his new pupil slip her knickers down for the first time at the piano. Say I won’t have to be caned? Silly girl! Her pants are halfway down already, even if only in imagination. With Albert’s tacitly expressed approval to back him up, this is one young lady whose bottom will be dancing most energetically at the earliest and every subsequent opportunity. It would seem a shame to deprive the girl of all hope at this very moment however. No reason why she shouldn’t be left a straw at which to grasp, if only temporarily.

‘Caned, my dear? Well now, that would depend on whether or not you deserved such a thing. Caning is only for girls who don’t do their very best, all the time. Now then, you’ll do your best, won’t you, eh?’

‘Oh, yes Mr Dupont! My very, very best!’

‘Of course you will, my dear. Just as you’ll do exactly as you’re told, all the time, eh?’

‘Yes, I will! Honestly I will!’

‘Fine. That’s what I like to hear. Well now, dry your eyes while Mr Willis and I slip out for a moment and have a word in private.’

‘Yes — yes. Th-thank you, Mr Dupont.’

‘That’s alright Rachel. Albert —?’

Outside in the hall, his voice lowered so that they will not be overheard, Mr Dupont attempts to clear up a couple of points, just to be on the safe side.

‘Ahh — Albert, let me be sure I understand the position here. Am I to take it that Rachel is to be — what I mean is, she seems to be aware of the possibility that she might be about to get her little — um — her little bum caned. Yes?’

‘Yes. That’s what I told her.’ Albert is quite hoarse, his face colouring up as he speaks.

‘I see. Hmm — but, by whose authority —?’

‘Don’t worry about that. Her mother is an old friend of mine. That’s what she’s doing working in the bank. I got her the job.’

‘But won’t she object if —?’

‘No.’

‘No? Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘I see —.’ He doesn’t, not quite. It still seems a rather nebulous arrangement to him. Still, she is almost irresistible — and Albert isn’t a man to take silly risks. If Albert thinks it’s alright —. ‘Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing, Albert. But if the girl’s mother isn’t going to object, why haven’t you taken the opportunity to deal with her yourself?’

Albert looks guiltily down at his feet.

‘Wouldn’t have the heart to, old chap. She looks up to me, you see. I don’t think I could stand it if she hated me for it. And then there’s her mother — but this way — well, I won’t exactly be to blame, will I? You’ll be the one. I’ll be sympathetic of course — understanding. And you’ll be the villain of the piece.’

‘But surely — if you’re the one who’s recommended that — she should come to me. And the one who allows the girl to be —.’

‘Actually, that’s the funny thing. I didn’t suggest it. Her mother did. All I said was that I knew a fellow, one of my customers, who was a music teacher, and her mother insisted that I should get her daughter in somehow. I didn’t know what to say to the woman. I said I thought there was a chance that you used fairly stringent methods, but she wouldn’t be put off. No, it’s all her mother’s doing. I’m an innocent party.’

‘So her mother realises that Rachel might be coming home with something more to show for her lessons than musical ability, eh?’

‘Yes.’

Which is all there is to it. Carte-blanche, apparently, and a fee besides. There seems little point in delaying the pleasure any longer.

April is evicted from the music room, and scampers off to her room with knickers tugged hastily up and her bum doing its best to spill out from under the snug elastic at the legs. The heated parts of her chubby buttocks which are unconfined by her knickers, glow cheerily as she pounds up the stairs and round the angle at the top. Rachel is summoned from across the hall and informed that Albert will be staying for the lesson. The girl seems to be considerably reassured by this. They accompany her into the music room and the door closes behind them.

Seated in a corner, Albert composes his face into an expression intended to allay any suspicion that he is in any way responsible for the course that the lesson is to take, while Mr Dupont, who has considerately, or perhaps sensibly, concealed the cane in a drawer of the bureau, smiles benignly at his new pupil and suggests in the most reasonable of paternalistic tones that Rachel might just like to slip out of her skirt.

‘P-pardon —?’ Rachel’s face is the very picture of disbelief. Her tutor maintains his air of utter normality and repeats his request even more gently.

‘But — but I —.’

‘You can put it over there, my dear, on the chair.’

She turns to her employer and stutters a few incomprehensible protestations. Albert manages to retain his studied detachment.

‘I don’t suppose Mr Dupont would ask you to do it if he didn’t have a good reason, Rachel. Now be a good girl and do as you’re told, hmm?’

‘But — I don’t understand —.’

‘It’s not at all helpful to the posture to sit at a piano in a tight skirt, Rachel,’ says Mr Dupont. ‘Posture is everything when learning the piano, you know.’

The blush which rises in Rachel’s pretty cheeks is one of flustered embarrassment and intuitive anxiety as she unfastens her skirt and lets it down to her feet.

‘And the slip, please —.’

‘S-slip —?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘But it’s not very tight, Mr Dupont —.’

‘No, but all the same —.’

‘But —.’

The cane rattles against the drawer as Mr Dupont takes it from its place of concealment.

Her knickers are very pretty. Pink and nylon and cuddled sweetly around her saucy young bottom. She seems hardly able to decide which way to turn to hide what from whom, and her hands hover here and there while her eyes dart this way and that and particularly in the direction of the cane.

‘And now — the knickers, please, my dear.’

‘Ooooh —.’

‘Knickers, please — I shan’t tell you again —.’

They descend haltingly, clinging briefly at hip level as though in sympathy with the girl’s reluctance to bare herself before the two men. Her face is a picture of unbelieving distraction as she seeks reassurance first from her employer, where she finds nothing but guilty smiles of encouragement and shifty-eyed glances which run down over her body and thighs. She turns to Mr Dupont, lips moving soundlessly as she struggles to find the words.

‘P-please, Mr Dupont — I — I haven’t done anything to d-deserve —.’

‘No, of course you haven’t, my dear. Nothing at all — it’s simply that I’d like you to become acquainted with the procedure should the need to punish you ever arrive.’

‘But — but —.’ She stumbles for more words but they refuse to come to her assistance. One hand huddles at the base of her belly, stray blonde wisps breaking cover here and there, while, perhaps out of deference to the presence of the cane in Mr Dupont’s hand, or perhaps because it is simply less embarrassing that Albert should be allowed to see her bare bottom than that he should catch a glimpse of anything at the front, she prefers to face her tutor and treat her employer to an unobstructed view of her pert and pretty bum.

‘And now, my dear, perhaps you would take your seat at the piano.’

Rachel sits on the stool and a piece of music is produced. She is asked to play it, as a test piece. Her playing is truly dreadful, not unexpectedly in the circumstances. When she finishes, Mr Dupont circles the piano and stool with an expression of intense concentration on his face. He stops conveniently a little off to Rachel’s left — about a cane’s length away. Her cheeky buttocks spill over the rearward edge of the stool — the cane hovers, then tucks itself up under the outswell of the girl’s bottom.

‘Now — I’m not at all sure that you played that to the best of your ability, Rachel.’

‘Ooh — b-but I d-did Mr Dupont, really I —.’

‘I don’t think so, Rachel. Now, I think I’d like to hear it played again —.’ The cane tap-tap-taps against the firmness of her buttocks. ‘— and remember, you told me that you would do your very, very best. Do you recall saying that to me, eh?’

‘Y-yes, Mr Dupont —.’

‘Good. And do you remember me saying that caning is only for girls who don’t do their very best — hmm?’

‘Yes sir —.’ Her calling him ‘sir’ is rather sweet, he thinks. She’ll be allowed to continue to call him ‘sir’.

‘Well done. Now — let’s hear that piece again, and this time play it as if you really mean it.’

‘Yes sir —.’ The threat — or as both Mr Dupont and Albert know it to be, the promise — of a caning does nothing for Rachel’s ability to play the piece any better than the last time. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had played it better. Hers is one little bottom which is there to be caned, and caned it will be!

And, of course, caned it most certainly is.