Behind High Walls part 2

Story from Janus 45. Second part of the Balcombe Manor trilogy by R.T. Mason continuing the account of the feminisation of Annabel Filton from Janus 44.

Deep in the leafy countryside, behind its high protective walls, Balcombe Manor basks in the languor of a drowsy English summer afternoon. The sun is shining out of a clear blue sky and it would be too hot if it weren’t for the gentle breeze which is keeping the air pleasantly fresh. The four young women, Mrs Blackett’s pupils, are in the garden for their Tranquillity Period, in the rose garden beneath a magnificent Albertine rose from which pink petals now and then fall gently down.

‘You’ve some petals on your hat,’ Felicity tells Annabel. ‘But leave them; leave them for your husband. His rose adorned with rose petals; isn’t that poetic.’

Annabel smiles. All four young women, as usual, are wearing wide-brimmed hats against the sun and are in calf-length dresses of an elegant bygone age — the middle 1930s perhaps. Under those dresses each girl’s form is tightly held in that ultimate of feminine discipline, a tight-laced corset, a garment which is worn at all times at Balcombe Manor. Annabel’s smile hides a certain nervousness. Today, this afternoon, her husband is visiting her for the first time.

Annabel is excited yet apprehensive. She has been here a week and a week can be a long time, especially a young woman’s first week at Balcombe Manor. As is usually the case it has not been an easy adjustment. Modern girls are simply not taught to accept submission and discipline. In particular they have had no experience of being regularly caned on the bare bottom. So when a young woman in her early twenties is sent to Balcombe Manor there is an ingrained behavioural pattern to be broken.

It is always a shock for the new pupil but Mrs Blackett’s methods are tried and tested and she is also a strong, dominant personality. Mrs Blackett and Balcombe Manor are invariably successful in remoulding a modern young wife into traditional feminine ways, but the remoulding, especially at first, is painful.

‘Lucky you,’ smiles Felicity. ‘You are allowed a whole hour alone with him in your room, you know.’ She giggles, as do the other two, Susan and Rosalind. Annabel flushes slightly.

It will be marvellous to see Roger again, to be with him, but at the same time… Annabel wonders if she dare ask him to take her away — as she has told herself all the past week she will. She suspects that even if she dares it will be quite useless — and could even make matters worse. Mrs Blackett could very well ask Roger if Annabel had made such a plea, and it would be very difficult to lie to Mrs Blackett. And then… it would simply be more of that cane, from Mrs Blackett herself or from Gillman, the head servant.

That dreadful cane. Annabel has had it every day, scything mercilessly into her tender bare nates. Yesterday an eight-stroke session and a six-stroke one. She has tried what the other girls tell her — and indeed what Mrs Blackett tells them — to look at it in a positive way. Every stroke of the cane will make her a better young wife for Roger, so she should welcome each caning. Somehow that doesn’t seem to make it any easier.

The sun continues to shine benignly and the pink rose petals now and then drift silently down. Annabel wonders where Roger is. Is he on the road now, nearing the Manor, or has he perhaps already arrived? There are no clocks or watches for the young women at Balcombe Manor so there is no way of knowing the time. When it is time for Annabel’s visit she will be told; Mr Gillman or one of the maids will come out.

Rosalind takes Annabel’s arm, squeezing gently. ‘I expect you’ll be taken in for a caning by Gillman just before your husband’s visit, Annabel. That is what usually happens on the first visit. It is very good for your discipline to have it right before meeting your husband.’

Annabel looks at Rosalind with alarmed eyes. No one has mentioned this before.

Felicity says, ‘Yes, it’s what happened to me.’

----//----

‘She is coming on quite nicely. A little reluctance but that is normal.’ Sylvia Blackett smiles at her guest. ‘Would you like to see her caned?’

Roger Filton, seated with Mrs Blackett in her elegant reception room, feels a rush of blood to his face. Sylvia Blackett’s words are, to say the least, a shock although he has known that his wife would be getting the cane here at Balcombe Manor. He coughs, to cover his disturbance.

‘It is something I recommend. It is very good for a husband to see his wife caned early on in her stay. On a later visit of course he is allowed to cane her himself but on this first occasion that is not a good idea. But I do like him to see her take it from my man Gillman, who is her regular caner.’

Mrs Blackett’s words cause a further increase in Roger Filton’s pulse rate. While he has known in general terms about the caning at this rather confidential but highly recommended country retreat he hasn’t really thought about the details. To learn that Annabel has been receiving the cane from another male is a real shock — but as the thought sinks in he realises it is also exciting. Arousing. His own young Annabel being made to submit to another man in that archetypal manner.

‘Gillman is a very experienced, mature man. He knows how to take her to the very brink of what she can accept, while not going beyond that point.’

Roger Filton takes a sip of the excellent white wine which Sylvia Blackett has poured. It is fortunate they are seated because that feeling of arousal has translated itself into a distinct tightness at the front of his well-cut trousers.

‘Annabel will naturally be unaware that you are watching, my dear Mr Filton.’ Mrs Blackett smiles her charming smile. ‘The wonders of two-way mirrors! It is really only fair to the pupil — if she knows her husband is observing her she might well become embarrassed or upset and find it difficult to submit in the way she has been taught. You do understand.’

Yes, he can understand that all right.

‘After the caning you will be free to visit her privately; just the two of you. An hour is permitted. I must warn you, though, that sometimes at this stage a pupil can get upset. She may plead that she is desperately unhappy and beg to be taken away. That is not uncommon, especially on her first visit, and we simply have to ignore it.’

‘Yes.’ Roger Filton tries to picture the meeting. ‘Yes, of course.’

Sylvia Blackett smoothes her hands over her elegant dark green dress. ‘One more thing. Like all my pupils Annabel is tight-laced and is required to remain tight-laced at all times. It is a marvellous disciplinary training for a young woman — equalling the cane in that respect.’ Mrs Blackett coughs delicately. ‘So if you want to undress her I would ask that her basque and stockings be not removed.’

Sylvia Blackett gets to her feet. Roger Filton, red in the face, has to follow suit though in the state he is now in he is not too happy about this. Fortunately his hostess has turned, to take the glasses to a sideboard. Urgently Roger Filton wills his aroused member to subside.

Almost immediately a maid appears, in response to Mrs Blackett’s summons on a bell. The girl is told to tell Gillman that they are ready and to take Mrs Filton into the Blue Room. The maid exits with a curtsey. Mrs Blackett turns, smiling, to Roger Filton who now is breathing a little more easily. They go out, across the hallway and along a corridor. Into a small room which has no furniture apart from a row of four chairs facing a blank wall.

‘Please sit,’ Sylvia Blackett tells her guest. ‘Then I will turn off the light. It makes viewing so much better.’

With the light off Roger can see that the blank wall is in fact transparent and affords a clear view of the adjoining room. It is not a large room; it has pale blue furniture and in the centre is what looks like a vaulting horse. Suddenly the Blue Room is brightly lit as its lights are turned on. The door has opened — and there is Annabel… with a man.

She is looking very lovely in a light green calf-length dress and a matching wide-brimmed hat. The man with Annabel in contrast is in a plain black suit. He is older, in his fifties, with the sober appearance of an English manservant. He speaks to Annabel but his words cannot be heard by the watchers. Annabel turns her big brown eyes on the man — an unhappy apprehensive look.

Pursing her lips she raises her hands to her head, removing her hat and revealing the full glory of her thick and lustrous chestnut hair. The hat is placed on a chair. And then Annabel’s hands, trembling a little it seems, go to the small buttons of her dress. The buttons are unfastened one by one, down to the last which is several inches below Annabel’s waist. The opened pale green dress reveals a contrasting dark blue undergarment. As Annabel slips the dress off her shoulders and then down the blue is seen to be a satin basque, tight-laced at the back. She steps out of the dress. There are French knickers of a slightly lighter blue than the basque, and below the knickers wide dark blue suspender straps fastening flesh-coloured stockings.

Roger Filton’s hands grip the arms of his seat. Annabel has placed her dress on the chair with her hat, and is now slipping down the French knickers. She steps out of them. The basque contains the lower halves of Annabel’s full breasts but not her nipples which protrude pinkly above the dark blue satin. Below, it reaches as far as the upper slopes of her hips, so that the ripe flanks are quite bare. Annabel’s thick russet bush is quite bare too and she makes no attempt to hide it from the servant, standing submissively before him with her hands at her sides.

Roger can hear a pounding in his ears. At a word from the servant Annabel turns to face away from the unseen watchers. They now can see the herring-boned criss-crossed silk lacing extending down Annabel’s back, holding the satin basque in a grip of iron about her. In addition Roger can now also clearly see, for the first time, his wife’s swelling bared buttocks. Those full, pale globes are likewise criss-crossed — with fading dark red stripes, of a cane.

As Roger Filton looks, experiencing an almost overwhelming mixture of shock and desire, the servant moves close and speaks some evidently soft words of reassurance — while his hand reaches out and gently, sensuously, strokes Annabel’s silky soft nates.

This now is almost too much and Sylvia Blackett, sensing that, places a soothing hand on her guest’s arm. ‘He is merely settling her down,’ she tells him quietly. ‘Getting her ready to take the cane.’

And very shortly Annabel has indeed been moved gently forward by that still caressing hand, to the waiting caning horse. To obediently stretch herself over its leather top. Without argument, for after a week Annabel is now well used to the caning horse in the Blue Room, her hands reach down to clasp the rung near the carpet.

Without needing to be told, her long legs in the nylon stockings spread wide, one high-heeled light green court shoe at either leg of the horse. Annabel’s head is hidden in a mass of dependant chestnut locks while her pale buttocks are on high, thrust out, a ripely feminine focal point. The wide-spread stance is also a frankly revealing one but there is no time to dwell on that for the cane is now in Gillman’s hand. Upraised, then, to the watchers, silently speeding down.

Annabel gasps as the cane bites in. The gasp is not heard in the next room but it can be imagined as her buttocks vigorously jerk and clench. And as the cane comes back there is now a bright fresh stripe on top of all the faded ones.

The slim bamboo rises and thwacks down a second time, juddering again into the springy flesh of Annabel’s bottom. A third and a fourth follow. Roger watches with heart-thudding fascination. It is shocking but he is also turned-on to a truly incomparable extent. The fifth cut is enough to jerk Annabel from her wide-spread stance, her feet kicking up and her thighs coming back together as she struggles with the pain. But the discipline she has learnt in her first week is already sufficient to guarantee that almost immediately she has her feet wide apart again.

Gillman’s cane continues to rise and fall. Ten strokes in all. Each one in fact is harder than any Annabel has yet experienced because Gillman is aware that the young woman’s husband is watching and wishes to make her suffer that little bit more — and to make the husband suffer too. For Gillman is aware of what will inevitably shortly take place in Annabel’s room and he hates the thought of it. He has a powerful desire for this young woman’s lusciously perfect body himself and to imagine Annabel and her husband on her bed in the act of love is a bitter pill. Tears are coursing down Annabel’s cheeks by the time Gillman has finished.

In Annabel’s room ten minutes later the couple stand in tongue-tied embarrassment. Annabel does not know Roger has watched her but for the moment it is still difficult to think of anything except her madly throbbing bottom. Roger for his part has had that overwhelming experience — of watching the caning and also when it was over, of seeing the servant run his hands over Annabel’s nude and glowing bottom in a most intimate manner. And after that drawing on her French knickers and helping her on with her dress. The servant, it seems, is very intimate with Annabel.

They look at each other for some long seconds, neither knowing what to say. And then Annabel abruptly rushes forward — to burst into tears in her husband’s arms. Through a secret peephole in the wall Sylvia Blackett watches. Observing a pupil with her husband is of course an extremely valuable guide to the girl’s progress. Sylvia Blackett is very experienced with young women and will know pretty well how Annabel is coming on, but even so a girl can sometimes keep part of herself hidden. She is not likely to keep it hidden with her husband in the privacy of her own room.

There is also the other matter. Sylvia Blackett is not prurient, she does not wish to watch Annabel and her husband in the act of love for her own pleasure, but it is important to know that Annabel performs willingly and without undue restraint. If there are problems — any mental hang-ups — then Mrs Blackett will have to explore them with Annabel, and also bring her medical adviser in.

But no, as Sylvia Blackett watches it is clear there are no problems on that score. Annabel performs her wifely function with freedom, indeed with that somewhat desperate abandon which is frequently seen in a young woman who has been deprived of her husband for this first, whole week while at the same time being subject to the constant attention of Gillman’s cane. Approvingly the older woman notes that, as instructed, there is no attempt to remove Annabel’s basque or her stockings.

An hour later in Mrs Blackett’s reception room a glass of excellent white wine is again being poured for Roger Filton. He is perhaps slightly-pink in the face; certainly his eyes have a healthy glow to them. Sylvia Blackett tells him she would like him to visit again in a week’s time.

‘A second visit sooner than that would cause Annabel too much excitement, and we don’t want to spoil things when she is doing so nicely.’ Sylvia Blackett smiles. ‘At the next visit I shall probably ask you to cane her yourself.’

Those images of Annabel in the Blue Room have been replaced in Roger Filton’s mind by the more recent heady events of Annabel’s own room. His feverish hand removing her dress and knickers, and then on her bed Annabel’s opulent body in that tight-laced blue basque. His fingers tracing the taut silk lacing… and then tracing the hot, so-sensitive weals on her burgeoning buttocks. Annabel sobbing — with pent-up emotion, with relief, with pleasure — as he makes love to her.

Afterwards, still lying on the bed, Annabel did plead to be taken away from Balcombe Manor. Kissing her gently, Roger told her it wasn’t possible. It was part of Mrs Blackett’s conditions that a young woman must stay the full two months. And besides, Roger thought he could already detect a change in Annabel. She was more subdued and docile. It was evident that after seven more weeks she would be an extremely submissive female. And when you are 45 and your wife is 22 it is highly desirable that she be properly trained, otherwise — well, who knew what she could get up to.

Now, sipping his wine, Roger Filton feels a further surge of excitement at Mrs Blackett’s words. At the thought that he himself will cane his beautiful Annabel.

‘She is showing some improvement already, don’t you think?’

Doing his best to keep calm Roger nods assent.

‘But I really must know, did she ask to be taken away? I’m afraid they quite often do at this early stage.’

Roger could deny it but he doesn’t. It is probably best for Annabel that Mrs Blackett knows the truth.

The handsome owner of Balcombe Manor smiles, her eyes deep dark pools. ‘That was naughty of her, wasn’t it? I think she’ll need an extra session with Gillman for that.’

Roger Filton bites his lip as he pictures again the Blue Room. And Annabel spread over that vaulting horse, her legs wide-splayed for the black-suited, cane-wielding servant.

----//----

It is not the Blue Room though.

Gillman is called in to Mrs Blackett as soon as Roger Filton leaves.

‘Annabel requires another session, I’m afraid, Gillman. Silly pleading with her husband to be taken home.’

James Gillman’s eyes light up. ‘Yes madam. How many strokes?’

‘You can use your own discretion. Whatever you think fit. And you can take her to your own room.’

As she says this Sylvia Blackett’s skin is tingling. There is no peephole into Gillman’s room. So when he has Annabel in there with the door locked he can do virtually as he wants with her. This thought sends a dizzy thrill through Mrs Blackett.

Her words send a thrill through Gillman too. Having a pupil in his own room for correction is a rare and heady pleasure. He licks his lips. ‘Yes madam. Thank you very much, madam.’

Sylvia Blackett moves close to her servant and squeezes his arm. ‘A special treat, eh James? I know how you enjoy having a little freedom with a pretty pupil. She’s fresh from being with her husband so she’ll be extra sensitive. Just have her back and properly dressed in the dining room for dinner.’

When Gillman opens Annabel’s door she is dressed again and sitting moodily at her dressing table, thinking of Roger speeding away from Balcombe Manor in fine fettle. She looks up, assuming Gillman has come to take her to the garden. But that is not what he tells her. Annabel’s eyes open wide; she has never been to Gillman’s room before. They walk along the corridor and up the stairs. It is a normal enough little room. Gillman locks the door — and tells Annabel to undress again. Heart fluttering, she removes her dress, and then the French knickers.

‘An extra session,’ Gillman says primly. ‘A special session because of complaints. Mrs Blackett is not at all happy with that.’

And because it is a special session in his own room James Gillman is free to go beyond the normal rules. He unfastens the basque’s laces and loosens them. The wide suspenders are unclipped from Annabel’s stockings, and the blue satin garment is removed. Annabel in just her stockings and shoes. Her ripe, unhindered breasts jut firmly out; her waist and sides, after a week of tight-lacing, bear the basque’s red marks — marks which are echoed in the red stripes across the splendid buttocks. Annabel stands straight but trembling, wondering what is to come.

There is the cane, naturally. James Gillman loves the cane. But there are also exercises to be performed. Whole series of exercises — running on the spot, deep bending, high kicking, upside-down cycling — each set repeated until Annabel is gasping for breath. The caning comes between the sets of exercises. And the cane also slices out, onto buttocks or thighs or calves, while the exercises are being performed, to ensure there is no slacking. Annabel has so much to endure, as her obedience is tested to the brink.

This continues until shortly before dinner, when Gillman takes Annabel back to her room — for her bath and the tight-laced basque again. And knickers and another pretty dress, and make-up.

‘Did you have a lovely visit?’ the others ask when she goes down to dinner.

Annabel’s body is aching all over and smarting in many places from her session in Gillman’s room; and there was also that fearfully hard caning which immediately preceded Roger’s visit. She forces a smile, aware that Mrs Blackett’s eyes are on her.

‘Yes,’ she manages. ‘It was lovely to see Roger. And he said… I was doing very well.’

Across the table, with its glittering silver, the dazzling white napery, Sylvia Blackett smiles. Her pupil is progressing.

----//----

The days at Balcombe Manor roll on in their timeless, almost hypnotic way. The outside world might as well not exist for Mrs Blackett’s pupils in their little world within the high enclosing walls. The gardens and those same rooms of the house which they visit every day: their own rooms, the Blue Room with its caning horse; the dining room; the morning room where each day after breakfast they dance, in pairs or in individual free movement. The music is quietly rhythmic, nothing at all rowdy, to improve a girl’s grace; when they dance together it is something from the past, a waltz, a sedate foxtrot.

There is a tidal rhythm in these timeless days, for the calm and tranquillity of those morning periods of dancing, the afternoons in the garden, the reading sessions in their rooms, are all set in sharp contrast to the sessions — in a pupil’s own room, in the Blue Room, also now and then in Gillman’s room. The mannered charm of an old waltz or the beauty of the roses in the garden — and the cane, in the hand of Mrs Blackett or Gillman, searing breathtakingly into obediently proffered bared buttocks.

And as they are part of the pattern of life those canings come to be expected. They are for the present more real than a girl’s home or husband, the sensations more impressive than any other experience could be, and almost without realising it Annabel finds her mind is beginning to accept it all. The cane has become a major part of her life. A day without the cane would now be almost unthinkable; and in a way it would be incomplete…

Not that there are any days without the cane at Balcombe Manor. A pupil’s caning programme in fact increases as her training progresses. In those first few days it was just the one daily period before dinner when she presented her Record Book to Mrs Blackett; but halfway through that first week Annabel was given a caning before lunch as well. It was repeated on subsequent days and has continued, so that there are now always at least two sessions each day. Sometimes there is a third in the evening.

So that is the daily ritual. The morning dancing and movement period followed perhaps by a lecture, and then the cane; the afternoon in the garden, the Tranquillity Period, followed by her bath and then the cane again. This pattern may be repeated in the evening. That is life at Balcombe Manor and a girl’s mind, and her body, come to accept it.

‘I think you’re settling in now,’ Felicity says to Annabel.

They are in the summer house and it is early afternoon. The days, without the benefit of clocks, have succeeded each other in a sort of mindless way. Annabel has now been here at Balcombe Manor for a little more than two weeks. She has had her second visit from Roger, two days ago, a visit in which Roger caned her in her room. It was really strange having the cane from Roger. Strange and not all that painful because Roger didn’t cane half as hard as Gillman, he wasn’t used to caning anyone, of course. But he clearly was very excited to be doing it.

Outside the summer house it is one of the rare rainy days but it is warm and not unpleasant, the rain softly dripping off the trees. It’s true, Annabel thinks, she has settled down. She has tried ever since the beginning to do what they said and have a positive attitude to the caning, but for some time it was simply impossible. Gradually, though, as the cane has become so much a part of her life, she has found that she can; like the other girls have said they do. Rather than mentally fighting it you have to welcome it.

It still hurts, Gillman and Mrs Blackett make sure of that, but now when she bends over, bottom bared, Annabel grits her teeth and tells herself: I welcome it. And in a way she does now welcome it. And when the caning session is over she manages to produce a smile, that submissive smile which says: I accept it. The pain in her bottom may be excruciating but it is a pain that tells you you are becoming a disciplined young woman, not one of these slobby modern girls with their half-baked ideas about liberated women.

Yes, Annabel is now settling in. She is now accepting the cane and she is beginning to welcome it. That is the key, as Mrs Blackett tells them. It must be welcomed. This is something which at the start of her stay Annabel would have thought utterly impossible.

As they sit there in the summer house watching the softly falling rain one of the maids, Bridget, suddenly appears carrying a large white umbrella. She smiles at Susan. ‘Your visit, Mrs Mitford.’

Susan casts a slightly nervous glance at the other three and then with Bridget holding the umbrella over her goes out across the wet lawn. Annabel realises she is holding her breath, and releases it. The reason is Susan’s visit, her visitor. Annabel knows it is not Susan’s husband, but another gentleman.

It is the next stage of training, a further test. It is a test Annabel has not yet had but she is now due for it, having been at Balcombe Manor for over two weeks. The thought is frightening, like many things new and not yet experienced. Submitting to another man, a stranger; that will be very different to having it from Gillman or Mrs Blackett.

The other girls have told Annabel about these extra visitors. They are friends of Mrs Blackett and there seems to be a number of them. They are all proper gentlemen but nonetheless… the pupil takes tea with the visitor and chats in the normal way. But the main point of the visit is that she is required to submit to the guest. He will cane her, just like Gillman or Mrs Blackett.

‘It is only an extra stage of the training,’ Felicity has told Annabel when the subject was first raised.

Naturally when a young wife goes back to her normal life with her husband she will not be submitting to other men, or at least not unless her husband wishes it, because she is her husband’s possession, perhaps indeed his most prized possession. But during her training, that is another matter. Submitting to another man, a stranger, baring your bottom for him to cane, that is clearly a stern test of discipline. Not surprisingly Mrs Blackett has quite a few male acquaintances who are only too pleased to be of assistance and administer such a test.

‘Do your husbands know?’ Annabel asked. The others didn’t seem too sure of that.

Annabel shivers slightly as Susan walks out of the summer house under Bridget’s umbrella. It could be her, Annabel. She will simply be told at breakfast, as Susan was told this morning. That is the only warning. Rosalind puts her arm round Annabel’s waist and giggles.

‘One or two of them cane really hard. I wonder if Susan will get a hard caner?’

Annabel pictures Mrs Blackett’s reception room. These visits are always the same, it seems; just the pupil and her visitor. Hesitantly she asks how many Rosalind has had.

The arm around Annabel’s waist squeezes. ‘Four. Two were hard caners. But then one should wish for a hard caner, shouldn’t one? It is a better test of one’s discipline. Are you wishing for a hard caner for your first, Annabel?’

Felicity says, ‘Mr Boulton was the worst I’ve had — or I suppose I should say the best. The hardest caner anyway. He was very nice and pleasant but he really caned my bottom. Harder than Gillman does.’

Rosalind says she hasn’t had Mr Boulton. Annabel nervously bites her lip.

Annabel’s first experience of this further training comes just two days later. She is told by Mrs Blackett at breakfast, as is usual, which means that there is all the day until tea time to think about it.

It is not Mr Boulton, his name is Craske, Mr Edward Craske. Annabel is conducted to Mrs Blackett’s room and there he is. He takes her hand in greeting and she performs a little curtsey, as she has been instructed. Mrs Blackett smiles and says she will leave them together, tea will be brought in shortly. Annabel is trembling, knowing what is to come. The cane, from this previously unseen man.

He is perhaps 60, tall with silver hair, in country tweeds. He leads her over to the window. His voice is smoothly upper class as he makes small talk, asking Annabel about herself. His hand is at her waist… and then it slides down her rose-coloured silk dress onto the richness of Annabel’s buttocks. Annabel stands still but her body is shaking. She looks out at the garden as the hand explores the ripe curves of her rear. It is part of the test of course; discipline. She must docilely submit to this man’s hand.

Annabel remains motionless as the hand goes down and then comes up again, this time up the backs of her thighs under the pink dress. Up the silkiness of her nylons and onto the satin-smooth bare flesh beyond.

‘You’re used to the cane now, my dear?’ he murmurs.

Annabel hears herself say Yes. He asks, ‘What about spanking? Have you ever been spanked, Annabel?’

Annabel shakes her head. The hand which has slid right up inside the wide leg of her French knickers is withdrawn. She finds herself being led over to the sofa. Mr Craske sits down… and pulls Annabel over his lap. As she goes down there is his voice, jocular:

‘A properly submissive young woman should take a spanking as well as the cane, don’t you think, my dear?’

Annabel feels her full skirt being pulled up, to fall down about her face; and then her pink knickers are being drawn down, to her knees. Annabel’s ripe buttocks are bare, framed by the stocking tops and the wide suspender straps and her cream-coloured basque above. Mr Craske’s hand roams freely over the opulent flesh. And then starts crisply spanking.

In a way it is worse than a caning. Not as painful but a more gross invasion of her person; this man’s hand sharply smacking into Annabel’s intimate flesh. That is the test presumably — to accept this invasion. Fiercely Annabel tells herself: I accept it; it is good for me. She tells herself this but her mind is unwilling to accept it.

The spanking continues. It is still going on when Annabel hears the door open. It is a maid with the tea. Mr Craske stops spanking but he does not cover Annabel’s bared haunches or let her up. She can only bite her lip and lie there humiliatingly exposed as the maid arranges the tea things on the coffee table. At last she exits… and the spanking resumes.

A short while later Annabel, red-faced and with shaking hand, is having to act her hostess role and pour the tea. The skirt of her pretty pink dress is back in place but Annabel’s knickers are off, a crumpled handful of pink silk on the sofa at her side. They are off so that when they have had tea Annabel can be caned.

He makes her kneel on the carpet in front of the sofa, her head and arms on its seat, and then Annabel’s skirt is once more raised, turned back over her shoulders. I accept it, Annabel once more desperately tells herself as the cane zips into her spank-reddened rump. She gasps into the softness of the sofa. The stroke, and the ones that succeed it, are mind-blitzingly painful. Harder even than Gillman at his most intense.

Afterwards, when Mr Craske has left, Mrs Blackett, eyes searching Annabel’s face, asks, ‘Were you a good girl, then? Did you submit willingly; welcoming it?’

Annabel shakes her head, not in a negative but trying to collect her thoughts. Her head is still going round and round but she forces herself to concentrate. She must think positive thoughts.

‘Yes,’ she manages, her eyes bright with threatening tears. ‘I accept it. I… I wanted it.’

Sylvia Blackett strokes her arm, smiling. Annabel is going to be another success. She is well on the way to becoming one of those nice traditional submissive females; and she still has more than five weeks of her training left. Five more weeks in which these ideas and attitudes can be firmly rooted in her mind and her body.

Smiling still, Mrs Blackett asks softly, ‘Would you welcome another caning from me now, Annabel?’

Annabel blinks her eyes to stop the tears which are still threatening. ‘Y… yes, Mrs Blackett,’ she mutters. ‘I… I know it would be good for me.’

Sylvia Blackett’s dark eyes glitter. ‘Excellent, Annabel. You are doing very well. Would you please slip your dress off, then.’