Local Politics

Story from Blushes 4

On that first occasion, Sandra’s mother had been most indignant!

‘What was I to say, Mr Petty? A phone call telling me my daughter was a thief! I mean, I couldn’t even tell him to sod off, could I — begging your pardon, Mr Petty — I have known the man for years! Friends, you might say, and him good enough to give my daughter a job — and now this! You’ll have to do something with her, Mr Petty, you really will! What with her father at sea most of the time she’s really got quite out of hand, she has. I have told her — “Mr Petty will have a thing or two to say about this my girl,” I said. “Just you see if he don’t! What you need is your backside tanned!” I told her.’

Mrs Collins had sat on the edge of a chair in Mr Petty’s study and her frustration had continued to simmer just below the surface as she’d waited for her patient listener to confirm her in her view that the girl needed ‘something going with her!’

It had been a year or so ago, when he’d still been up at Westminster, that the woman had arrived on his doorstep demanding that he should ‘use his authority’ to influence her daughter away from the paths of what she called ‘wickedness’, trespassing on his time on the grounds that she had met him once at a village fete and he’d complimented her on the refreshing quality of her home-made lemonade. Rashly he had agreed to speak to the girl, not because he’d imagined it would do any good but, in truth, only because the girl’s mother had excited his imagination by the comment, ‘what she needs is a good hiding, Mr Petty, and I would have respect for the man who’d give her one!’ Foolishly — incredibly so — he had seen the girl, who had been startlingly pretty and had seemed not in the least like a girl whose ‘wickedness’ was likely to lead her into any kind of trouble at all. Taking leave of his senses, and risking what had been a promising political future, he had called on Mrs Collins a day or so later and over a cup of tea in the kitchen had declared his opinion that she had been perfectly correct in her assessment of the best remedy. She needed, he’d said, ‘a good old-fashioned spanking’, and in the seclusion of his study the following weekend that was precisely what he’d given the girl, but for a spanking he’d substituted a caning!

For three days after he had woken each morning in a cold sweat, cursing his stupidity for having allowed his career to be ruined by a moment’s lack of self-control; and then Mrs Collins had turned up first thing one morning!

When he’d seen her come through the study door he’d almost had a heart attack! Yet the woman had come only to thank him; Sandra had been a different girl, she’d said, and she herself was so grateful to him for having taken the trouble to help her in her little problem when he must have had so many important things on his mind. Tentatively he’d sounded her out, wondering if she could actually be sitting there condoning, apparently, the taking down of the girl’s knickers, the spread-eagling of her half-naked daughter across his study desk and the ensuing thorough caning of her helpless teenage bottom!

Slowly it had dawned on him, incredibly, he was in the clear. She knew precisely what happened, and although he could hardly believe it she was as pleased as punch!

That had been a long time ago — even a week, they said, was a long time in politics. Since then he had lost his parliamentary seat and had been obliged to go back to running the family business until the time should come when he might stand again and, hopefully, be reselected. But although the electors had deserted him, Mrs Collins hadn’t, and Sandra’s moral welfare was something he had gratefully assumed responsibility for over the past twelve months. The only fly in the ointment had been that damned newsagent the girl worked for on Saturdays. He had cautioned Mrs Collins about it since, of course, but she’d been foolish enough to report to the aggrieved party on that first occasion, the newsagent from whom the five pound note had originally been stolen, that her M.P. had brought his influence to bear and there would be no repetition of the trouble. Sandra had innocently, though no doubt shamefacedly, confirmed her mother’s claim, and had incidentally allowed every little detailed to be wormed out of her in the process. The newsagent had, apparently, declared that he’d have done the same thing himself had he realised Mrs Collins had such a sensible attitude to these things! All might have rested there had not Sandra proceeded to get caught filching a second five pound note barely a month later! Nothing had been said to Mrs Collins by the newsagent, nor understandably by Sandra, but the girl’s knickers had come down in the back room of the shop and she’d got a second dose of what she’d had at Mr Petty’s hands, and had been given others since for exactly the same reasons. It seemed that after all, the girl was prone to ‘wickedness’ when it came to other people’s money.

It went somewhat against the grain to have to share Sandra’s moral education with some grubby tradesman but there had been nothing to be done about it. At least, there hadn’t seemed to be, but now with Sandra due to leave school in a month or so, it had occurred to Mr Petty that the girl wouldn’t need a Saturday job if she could be found proper full-time employment and who else would be better placed to keep an eye on the girl in her first job than a man to whom her mother had brought her in the first place! He had mentioned it yet, but Mr Petty had a plan in mind and young Sandra wasn’t going to have any trouble finding employment at the end of term!

For the present though, plans to extricate Sandra from the newsagent’s tacky fingered clutches can be sublimated to the immediate prospect of obliging the girl’s mother, for the fourth time in six weeks, by ‘dealing’ with her errant daughter. Mr Petty leans back in his squeaky swivel chair and considers how best — and incidentally how most enjoyably — to discharge this obligation. He softens the tone of his voice with a quiet hint of understanding, coaxing the girl to confide in him.

‘Now then Sandra — perhaps it’s time you told me about this business of missing the last bus home on Friday night.’ He crosses his legs as though making himself comfortable with the intention of paying the closest possible attention to what the girl has to say. In fact she has little enough to offer by way of excuse.

‘Er — well, I just sort of missed it, Mr Petty.’ She lets her head incline a little downward as though well aware of the insufficiency of her answer.

‘You “just sort of missed it.” And that’s all you have to say, is it Sandra?’

‘It — it just wasn’t there when I got to the stop. It had gone.’ She glances down at the floor and mumbles, ‘Perhaps it was early or something.’ He gazes absorbedly at the close fitting snugness of her brief yellow shorts where they slip between her legs at the apex of her thighs. It is perfectly possible to discern the faint involution of her pubic cleft under the thin cotton; he watches the tight ruckles pull new, revealing tensions in the shorts as she shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, her hips tilting has she fidgets uncomfortably.

‘I see.’ He re-crosses his legs the other way; Sandra’s tongue peeps out between her lips for a moment as the feeling of tension mounts in the silence, which follows that condescending ‘I see.’

‘Do you understand why your mother would be concerned that you should go out to a disco in the village, possibly meeting people there whom she mightn’t like you to become too friendly with — boys, for example — and then not come home until — what was it — half past twelve?’

‘Y-yes — I knew she’d be worried.’ There is a smudge of dirt on her knee, and another one on her pale yellow ankle socks. Her sandals bear faint traces of mud on their thin white straps. ‘But I don’t — um — I don’t have anything to do with people she wouldn’t like —’ Her legs are sun-tanned, warm-toned against those cool yellow shorts. From her plump little mound where it bridges the satin-sided space between the very tops of her inner thighs, the shorts incline upwards towards the outside of her legs at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees, giving her a long-legged look.

‘Then why didn’t you telephone? Wouldn’t that have been the sensible thing to do?’

‘I — I just didn’t think —.’ Her T-shirt is French navy blue, without sleeves. The tops of her bare arms are as tanned as her legs. Her breasts push discreetly under the thicker cotton, their nipples faintly traceable.

‘Thoughtlessness is one of those things which have to be punished, Sandra.’ Her fingers pluck fitfully at the edge of the leg of her shorts. ‘Isn’t it, my dear?’

‘I — I suppose so —’ When he makes her bend across the end of the desk her shorts will pull up close around the roundness of her young buttocks. The division of the bottom cheeks will be highlighted by the tightness of the centre seam and the up-angled legs will cut up more sharply and leave parts of her buttocks bare below their lower edges.

‘Yes — I suppose so too —’ He’ll be able to follow the line of her knickers up across each cheek, shadowed under the taut yellow shorts, ‘I think you’d better bend over the desk, Sandra, don’t you?’

She licks at her lips again, and now there is a suggestion of pink in her cheeks. Her eyes are wide and anxious.

‘For the strap. Don’t you think your thoughtlessness deserves a good strapping, Sandra?’

‘Y-yes —’

‘Bend over then —’

From the side he sees the shorts ride up a good two inches, creasing delicately along the side seam. That sweet, smooth-skinned under-curve of her buttocks where the majority of the strokes will go — nicest there, where she’ll feel them later when she sits down — is left bare. The skin there is more delicately sun-kissed, paler than her legs yet without any definite edge to the tan, simply shading out of dark into light. That paler, tender-looking underneath plumpness will pinken at first as the strap’s knowing fingers seek it out. Then the hot crimson stripes with their sharply lined edges and their darker, more painful tip-shapes will well up rapidly, eagerly, as she starts to gasp and then to sob when the second and third and fourth strokes visit those bared, vulnerable little places. He’s pleased with those shorts, bought purely speculatively with no clear idea whether they would be right or not, the intention being to have her change into them when she arrived after lunch on this Sunday afternoon while she did an hour’s penance in his garden, sweeping up leaves while she had a while to think about her coming punishment. The whole of her outfit looked perfect on her — he thinks he might buy her a few more things now he knows her size.

‘Lift up —’ She pushes her bottom up and back, tightening the close fit of the shorts still more. He’ll give her half a dozen across those shorts, being sure to see that the strap lands on those nice bits as well, then he’ll have her take them off and her knickers down — they’re white and rather brief, and he was pleased with them too as he made her stand there in the middle of his study and put them on when she changed earlier for gardening stint.

‘Feet apart, please.’ A little of the fullness comes back into her buttocks as she puts her feet about eighteen inches apart. ‘Hands in the middle of your back.’

He’ll give her those first few, then perhaps another dozen on the bare — enough anyway for her to show her mother when she gets home — and then he’ll take those little knickers right off and have her spread herself a little more, and then — well, some things don’t show, do they, not like strap marks on a girl’s bottom!

Mr Petty’s chair squeaks a last time as he gets to his feet and opens the drawer where he keeps the strap.

There — now then, kneel up properly!