Original Story — The Belles of St Mark’s 1

Taking a rest from collages, Culver has turned his hand to prose, inspired by the drawings and comments in the Reverend White series by Darcy. In two parts — the second to follow next week.

We might reasonably assume that morning and evening services in an Anglican church in a rural village on a typical sleepy Sunday wouldn’t provide much by way of excitement for gentlemen of the choir. Yet seating arrangements in the choir stalls at St Mark’s should give us pause for thought — along with certain other considerations. It so happens that adult male choristers are seated directly opposite the soprano stalls. And the front row of the soprano stalls is exclusively occupied by girl choristers in their late teens, a number of whom are provocatively attractive. Every Sunday the ringing of the church bell summons choir and congregation to Matins, Holy Communion and Evensong. And if you’re a middle-aged male chorister, that doleful sound will likely put a spring in your step: it’s time to ogle the belles of St Mark’s.

The front row of the soprano stalls is an alluring pick and mix. Nearest the lectern sits redhead Pippa, for example; eighteen-year-old stepdaughter of Colonel East, Rtd. As senior choirgirl, Pippa proudly occupies the role of crucifer, leading all choristers from the choir vestry to the stalls at the beginnings and endings of services by bearing before her the processional cross. She’s also an accomplished church reader, regularly taking to the lectern to read scripture as part of the services. Everyone agrees that Pippa’s deportment is dignified, her diction impeccable and that she sings as sweetly as an angel. But it’s her physical charms which preoccupy the men of the parish, whether they admit to this or not: her feline green eyes; the smattering of ginger freckles across her pale cheeks and cute button nose; her coppery, waist-length hair, which shimmers when caught by sunlight refracted through the stained glass windows; her generous bottom, which sways rhythmically under her neatly tailored cassock when she leads the procession; and the prominent swell of her breasts against the folds of her surplice as she grasps the staff of the crucifix, reads a lesson or holds open her hymn book.

Next along in the soprano stalls is Alice, the only child of single parent Samantha Redway. Alice, also eighteen, is a month or two younger than Pippa, and an inch shorter. She’s a pretty girl with a trim, petite figure. Her straight black hair, tinted blue and purple, offsets her pale, angular face, its fringe falling below her right brow, hiding her eye and accentuating her generally sullen air. Other than when singing, or muttering responses to the minister’s versicles, Alice assumes what seems to be a permanent pout, completing her sulky look. As a total teen package, she’s certainly an antagonising draw for the gaze of middle-aged male parishioners.

Mr Sedgewick, who sings bass, and Mr Thorndyke, who sings tenor, are bachelors in their mid-sixties, outwardly respectable figures in the village community and stalwarts of the choir. For some time, however, these first-rate fellows have shared secrets — perversions, one might say; though they themselves would be reluctant to use that word. They have in common, for instance, a preference for a frankly lewd state of dress — or rather undress — beneath their cassocks during services. Not to put too fine a point on it, neither of them wears underpants to church. And when getting themselves ready for services in the choir vestry, each has a habit of unzipping his trouser flies at the same time as buttoning up his cassock. The pair agree that this is simply a matter of comfort and convenience, a covert way of affording their private parts free sway under the roomy cover of their cassocks when, as is inevitable, they are stirred to arousal by lascivious contemplation of the girls who’ll be seated in the stalls opposite. There’s nothing much to give the game away, except, perhaps, a slight tenting in their cassocks, which can easily be disguised by surreptitious shifts in posture. Not that either chap has any interest in the other’s nether regions; it’s merely a question of enjoying the mutual recognition that they are indeed likeminded.

Central to Sedgewick’s and Thorndyke’s likemindedness is their enthusiasm for — even obsession with — a particular aspect of village culture which is both traditional and clandestine: the authority enjoyed by men of standing and seniority to mete out bare-bottom spankings and canings to young women in their charge. It’s an open secret that several older girls in the choir are directly ‘impacted’ by this local practice. True, neither Sedgewick nor Thorndyke has a girl of his own over which to exert direct spanking rights, yet each is keen to make the most of any crumbs which may fall from luckier fellows’ tables. The two friends often confide in each other over pints of ale in a quiet corner of the village pub, sharing stories of spanking opportunities which have happened to descend on their tented laps recently.

Sedgewick has had some choice tales to tell of late. He’s fortunate enough to be on excellent terms with the wily old vicar of St Mark’s, the Reverend Crowley, someone who’s equally likeminded and whose pastoral role gives him great advantage when it comes to smacking female bottoms. The Reverend Crowley concocts all manner of pretexts for administering ‘Christ Almighty spankings’ to the young women of the parish. Many such spankings take place inside the consecrated space of the church building itself. And the Reverend Crowley regularly provides friend Sedgewick with chances to witness and partake of the smacked-bottom action.

As Anglicans will know, the Church of England confirms christened members of its congregation as communicants when they’re still quite young. But the bishop overseeing the diocese of which St Mark’s is a part has an ongoing issue with the Reverend Crowley. Ever the outlier, our vicar insists on deferring confirmation for the girls of his parish until they’ve reached the age of eighteen. Whenever challenged by the bishop about this unilaterally decreed gender-based age threshold, the Reverend Crowley pontificates unctuously about how, in his opinion, girls need to have attained a certain level of maturity before they’re ready for confirmation and the customised tuition which he provides at St Mark’s as a compulsory course of preparation for it. He doesn’t elaborate for the bishop on finer points of detail about his course of tuition for eighteen-year-old girls, which in fact takes the form of one-on-one instruction on Wednesday evenings, at twilight, in the chancel at St Mark’s. Sedgewick, meanwhile, is fully conversant with the details, because the vicar has agreed a special arrangement with him. Whenever a Wednesday session is scheduled to take place with a young lady to their mutual liking, the Reverend Crowley allows Sedgewick to slip into the church through the vicar’s vestry so that he can observe. Sedgewick kneels in the front pew, ostensibly for private prayer but really to have a good gawp at proceedings, wearing no underpants beneath his trousers as is his custom in church. Alice Redway was the last girl whose tuition Sedgewick witnessed in this way — and eventually assisted with.

The truth about Alice is that she’s a bit of a rebel, certainly when compared with the innocent, straitlaced Pippa East. Alice is a member of the choir only because her mother insists on it. The girl herself resents everything to do with it. Sitting in the stalls during services, she’s acutely aware of the beady gaze of Sedgewick, Thorndyke and other male choristers, how their eyes rove over her and the rest of the girls. She responds with the most cutting of looks, sweeping back her fringe, tilting her head and insolently narrowing her eyes at them, as if to say ‘Fuck you!’

Yes, Alice’s attitude leaves a lot to be desired. Left to her own devices on a Sunday, she would gladly abandon cassock, surplice and ruff and instead do as she does every Saturday: that is, she’d lie around in bed half the morning; apply black lipstick and thick eye make-up; don a loose, sleeveless top, imprinted with the logo of some rock band or other; pull on a pair of bleached jeans, ripped at the knees; fasten her studded belt; buckle up her heel-length boots; adorn her wrists with tacky plastic bracelets; then she’d take the bus to the nearest town, to "hang out by the monument" and "vape" with other teen "emos" or "goths" or what have you. Alice doesn’t yet have tattoos or piercings but these will surely come next.

Samantha Redway, Alice’s mother, is a simple woman, unquestioning in her faith and professing conservative values to mitigate the moral lapse of her own youth in having conceived Alice out of wedlock. She accepts that Alice is going through a difficult phase, perhaps troubled by never having learned the identity of her father: a case of daddy issues, in a certain sense. To Samantha’s credit, she tries to do whatever she can to keep her daughter in line. Though it’s sometimes a struggle, she always gets her to the choir vestry punctually, ensuring that she’s dressed appropriately at least for choir practice and services. On Alice’s eighteenth birthday, Samantha enrolled her for the Reverend Crowley’s course of Wednesday one-on-one sessions, aiming to see her confirmed later in the year. Samantha has implicit faith in the Reverend Crowley and his methods of tutoring even recalcitrant girls like Alice towards that sacramental rite of passage.

One of the Reverend Crowley’s key tutorials is on the moral importance of repentance, a topic he covers early in his course. In his view, it’s a subject best taught when a girl is placed over the knee for a bare-bottom spanking. He makes no bones about it. Sin, shame, repentance, atonement… what better than a soundly smacked bottom to focus a girl’s mind on moral contrition? When planning a homily for this session he admittedly flicks through a selection of authentic religious tracts, but he spends most of his prep time viewing a well-worn spanking video which he keeps in a secret cabinet in the vicarage, a mid-1980s classic entitled Moral Welfare. His favourite segment of this tape is focused on the punishment of a shy model in schoolgirl uniform, but when prepping for Alice’s session he had an instinct that it would be better to fast-forward to the final segment, where the starlet getting a rehabilitative hiding is a slutty punk girl of the era. Watching that latter segment seemed somehow more appropriate to the case of young Alice. (If girl tutees of the Reverend Crowley sometimes feel that he speaks a lot of sanctimonious claptrap, this may be because he draws his rhetoric as much from the disciplinarians of Moral Welfare and similar videos as from religious tomes.)

Evading her mother on the Wednesday evening of her repentance tutorial, Alice decided to express her disdain for ‘the whole confirmation thing’ and to outrage the vicar by turning up at the church wearing more or less the same garb that she adopts on Saturdays — black lipstick, loose sleeveless top and studded belt included. Except that she dared to be even more provoking: she went braless and swapped the bleached jeans for a ridiculously short faux-leather skirt and a pair of thigh-high socks — the stripey variety, black and pink. The logo on her vest top was an occult design encircled by the words, Some Girls Wander by Mistake. She had popped in her earbud headphones, too, listening to metal music on her mp3 player as a way of telegraphing a complete lack of interest in anything the vicar might have to say to her that evening. Her most audacious move was to put on an earring in the shape of an inverted cross.

When Alice arrived for her session, strutting into the choir vestry, the Reverend Crowley did a double take. He could hardly believe his eyes. He knew Alice pushed at boundaries, but what did she think she was up to? Her mode of dress was positively sacrilegious! He made a show of flustered ire, the reaction she’d intended to provoke, although the fire she was fanning was more a flame of lust than of anger. Not an hour before, he’d been priming himself by watching the punkette’s punishment in that classic spanking video.

It was Alice’s turn to be gobsmacked when the incensed vicar made his move. He tugged out her earbuds and unclasped from her belt the mp3 player in which their cord was plugged. Since she’d fed the cord under her loose top, his confiscation of the device involved some hurried reaching up inside that garment, brushing his hand around her midriff and breasts, as well as some manhandling around her waist. He then seized her by her upper arm and marched her straight past the aisles to the chancel. His tight grip brooked no resistance, his chubby fingers pressing hard into the taut flesh of her bare limb. She yelped and started whining about her music player, which he’d left on the piano in the vestry. He told her he might let her have it back when he’d finished with her. But that wouldn’t be for some time yet. As he pushed and pulled her along, she thought she could make out a solitary male figure kneeling in the front pew. ‘What the actual fuck!?’ It was hard to be sure in the shadows, but her main worry had to be instead that she’d gone overboard in ‘triggering’ this heavy-handed old bastard of a vicar.

When they reached the chancel the Reverend Crowley released his hold on Alice. She rubbed her bruised arm and scowled at him. She was ‘super pissed right now!’ He dragged an armless wooden chair across the tiled floor, positioning it demonstratively in front of the altar. Then he plumped himself in the chair, parted his knees, instructed the girl to stand facing him and beckoned her forwards. Glaring at her, he told her to spread her legs so that that they touched the insides of his own. God, was this really necessary?! (She exclaimed the word ‘God’ as if it had two syllables: ‘Goh-awd!’) He explained to her in no uncertain terms that he regarded it as his moral duty to spank the hell out of her, literally, until she learned the meaning of repentance. He added that after her handspanking he was going to have to cane her. Just for being a shameless little hussy. But first he was going to slap her legs. ‘Really?!’ Yes, really.

The Reverend Crowley lifted his right hand and flexed his fingers, his eyes fixed on Alice’s shapely thighs. In that moment, she bitterly regretted her choice to wear a micro-skirt together with thigh-high socks. This had left the target area of bare flesh readily demarcated, vulnerable to an imminent salvo of intimate slapping. The vicar began his onslaught with relish and energy. He smacked her thighs repeatedly, both inside and out, making her yell out in pain. (‘Oww!’ — again in two syllables: ‘Ow-wah!’) The slaps stung Alice so sharply that her knees buckled and she almost lost balance.

Kneeling on a prayer mat in his pew, fly undone, Sedgewick had a clear view of the action in the chancel. All was made visible by a pool of yellow light around the altar, the only electric light source the vicar had switched on. Sedgewick heard everything clearly, too; the noise was amplified by the old building’s acoustics.

It wasn’t long before the Reverend Crowley flung the distraught girl over his knee, having first unpopped the fasteners on her skirt and tossed that frivolous garment, together with her knickers, into a nearby collection plate. The vicar clamped the girl’s trembling legs between his trunk-like thighs, to prevent her squirming free. Her trapped young bottom gyrated in futile protest. He grabbed her wrists with his free hand, restraining her hands in the small of her back amidst the folds of her flipped-back top. Alice’s head bobbed close to the floor, her dark hair with its blue and purple highlights tumbling forward and sweeping against the tiles. The inverted cross hanging from her ear glinted dully as it swung to and fro and back and forth.

That’s when the tutorial began in earnest. The Reverend Crowley spanked Alice thoroughly, with measured deliberation, lecturing her between the smacks on the moral imperative of repentance. Each slap echoed around the church like a pistol shot and caused her whole body to jolt. Yet neither the resounding spanks nor the girl’s cries of pain drowned out the rhythmic creaking coming from Sedgewick’s pew. Sedgewick was, let’s say, actively enjoying the spectacle. And the spanking continued for a full ten minutes.

‘Mister Sedgewick, I need you up here, please!’ The vicar’s sudden request broke the enraptured observer’s cover. Sedgewick hastily made some rearrangements in the trouser department and duly emerged from the shadows. Momentarily distracted from the flaring pain in her bottom, Alice turned her head towards Sedgewick from her upside-down position and sneered with loathing. She’d been right. Someone had been there all along, watching. And who should it be but that creepy old voyeur from the choir!

‘I need a hand, you see,’ the vicar said. ‘Got to fetch the cane from my vestry cupboard. While I’m doing that, be a good fellow and put this wretched girl into position, will you? You know, for the cane. Over the altar. Legs apart. Clear the altar of the cross and candles first, of course. Give her some room. Then get around the other side and hold her down by the arms so she’s ready for her thrashing!’ The Reverend Crowley eased the shaking, incredulous Alice off his lap and stood her upright for Sedgewick to take a hold of. Sedgewick didn’t need to be asked twice to do as the vicar had stipulated.

When the Reverend Crowley returned, cane in hand, he was pleased to see that Sedgewick had got Alice exactly where he wanted her. Sedgewick had the red-faced look of a man who had made a meal of getting her into position, mauling her spanked buttocks and pulling at her slapped inner thighs to ensure that her legs were adequately parted. Alice sobbed and moaned. The vicar told her to keep quiet and proposed a plan of action to Sedgewick. ‘We’ll give her a round dozen. How about that? Six from me and six from you. That’ll be enough for now. It’ll give her something to think about. Several more Wednesdays to go, before she’s finished the course!’ Sedgwick nodded his agreement.

The vicar swished his cane around for a minute or so, making it whistle through the air and describe ever expanding arcs for theatrical effect. Putting the fear of God into the girl. Then he took aim and dealt her six parallel strokes, evenly spaced across both buttocks. He took his time. His aim was precise. He made each stroke count. At the other side of the altar Sedgewick kept a firm grasp of Alice’s forearms, gripping her below her elbows but above the plastic tat of her cheap bracelets and wristbands. She convulsed every time the cane whipped against her tender buttocks but he managed to hold her fast. She shrieked and looked up at him wildly. Her tears of anguish had caused her heavy black eye make-up to smudge, lending her now the appearance of a deranged harlequin.

When it was time to swap places, Sedgewick ventured a proposal for his six. Three to be placed diagonally across her buttocks, intersecting the livid tramlines left by the clergyman. The final three to be placed across the backs of her thighs, to complement with red stripes the black and pink of her stripey thigh-high socks. That would really hurt. The vicar thought it an excellent suggestion. He handed over the cane and nudged the girl’s booted heels further apart with his right foot before taking his place behind the altar. Sedgewick used the tip of the cane to prod the girl a little, testing the springy resilience of her punished teenage flesh, and then he delivered his six stokes as planned and without mercy. Alice wailed like a banshee.

Sedgewick departed soon after it was all over, his heart steely with dark pleasure. The Reverend Crowley softened a little, gave back Alice her mp3 player and offered her some recovery time in the vicarage, which was situated next to the church. A chance for a wash and brush-up. An application of soothing lotion. A nice cup of tea. The sobbing Alice told the vicar, who now seemed peculiarly avuncular, that her mother was out at a Women’s Guild meeting that evening. She’d be late out as it was the AGM. So when she, Alice, eventually arrived home she’d be able to let herself in, shower and go to bed without having to face any tricky questions or drama. The vicar nodded approvingly.

----//----

Some weeks later Alice attended the last session of her course. The subject of her final tutorial was the ritual of the Eucharist. Something of a practice run for the holy sacrament itself. On this solemn occasion, the only remaining vestiges of Alice’s punk image were her black lipstick and the inverted cross earring. Rather oddly, the Reverend Crowley had countenanced these indulgences, incongruous though they were. Alice was also wearing her chorister’s ruff around her neck, freshly starched; some white ankle socks and a pair of white, sensible shoes. But nothing else. She was otherwise quite naked.

Alice had already been spanked and caned that evening. Now she was kneeling meekly at the communion rail, her hands clasped together in front of her tummy and her head bowed. Subjugated. The Reverend Crowley parted his vestments, gently raised her chin and intoned, in a voice hoarse with lust, ‘Take, eat. This is my body which is given for you.’ Looking on, his heart racing, Sedgewick took a swig of communion wine from the chalice and awaited his turn. He wondered whether smudges of black lipstick wipe off easily.