Lesley: Behind Closed Doors

By Richard Manton from Janus 13

You might decide that the situation described in this story is mere fantasy. However much you might like to bamboo the bare bottom of a promiscuous boyishly-cropped young wife like Lesley, such things simply do not happen in fact. Least of all in the convenient seclusion of a remote island with no prying eyes and no one to hear her cries. You bet it couldn’t happen? How wrong you are!

In the recently published diaries of Evelyn Waugh — to look no further — there is an entry for 15 April 1925 when a party of young people were staying on Lundy Island, 20 miles from land and almost deserted. Just before midnight, Waugh walked into an ‘amazing orgy’. A girl (still alive and not named in the diary for reasons of libel) was having her bare bottom tanned sadistically. She was a volunteer. The punishment also involved other humiliations. The girl’s bottom cheeks were slapped ‘rosy’, but that was not enough for her or her chastisers. By the time they finished her buttocks were very severely scored by the cane, but her eyes were ‘shining with desire’…

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the sort of young woman whom you think most deserving of the tanning of a lifetime. For many people the trendy, liberated, promiscuous young wife — causing untold misery to others — is high on the list. You might think such a young woman is the very last to get, say, a judicial caning or a reform house birching across her bare bottom. You might well think so — and you could be wrong. Wait until you penetrate another world of discipline — behind closed doors.

To begin with, imagine the following scene. A summer island off the coast of France — holiday lets in the summer and a tiny population in the winter. There is a potato field belonging to a large house rented for the season by a changing commune of men and women. Now look at the young woman working in the field, lifting potatoes.

Lesley is about 28 years old, quite tall and trim in a trouser-suit of thin black nylon. Look more closely. She has the classic English middle-class good looks of firm fair-skinned features, marred by the aloofness in her blue eyes, the rather sullen jaw and sulky mouth. Her straight fair hair is cut in the unisex style of a liberated young woman, cut short at the nape and shaped to her head from its high crown to the jawline. At the front she wears it in a long, parted little-boy fringe.

Her figure is good, despite a few years of marriage and a couple of kids. There is still a taut elasticity to her breasts, her thighs long and trim as the result of bicycling and other exercise. The thin black nylon is very tight round her hips showing that child-rearing has done no worse than broaden them very slightly. The well-controlled pregnancies have also imparted a slight firming-out to the cheeks of Lesley’s bottom.

A suitable subject for discipline? Perhaps so. Lesley has the spoilt wilful look of an emancipated young wife who puts her own sexual pleasures before the requirements of her marriage or kids. A high-school and college girl, no doubt. A short period of married bliss, birth of kids, then the sleeping around in the name of liberation. To the world at large, there is no softening of the arrogance in the blue eyes and the general snootiness of her demeanour.

From the boat which brings the day-trippers, a middle-aged man walks along by the potato field. He stops and watches, about 20 feet away. He fancies Lesley — as many of us would. He gets — what most of us would get — a quick shake of her fringe as she straightens up and a dismissive, contemptuous look from those blue eyes.

So the promiscuous young married woman bends to her task again, legs apart and knees braced slightly. At once the man moves a few steps to admire the rear view. The thin black nylon is tight as drumskin over the firm statuesque cheeks of Lesley’s arse! At 28 years old, after two well-controlled pregnancies, she has a seat like an Amazon soldier-girl. As she bends with feet apart and knees tucked forward, that taut erotic maturity of Lesley’s buttocks, temptingly parted by her pose, is shown to perfection.

Perhaps she is not aware that as she moves her admirer shifts too, lips pursed roundly as he draws sharp breaths of appreciation. He is, to put it bluntly, a bottom-fancier and the one he fancies most of all at the moment is Lesley’s! Should he ever possess her he could be guaranteed to keep her very busy in that area. One may even notice a small black oblong in his hands. Undetected by anyone else, it appears, he is taking one surreptitious photograph after another for his private collection!

At length, Lesley straightens up for the last time, gives him a look of withering contempt, and walks back to the house. Now you might think she returns to a world of liberation and casual sex. In that case, brace yourself. There is a burly man of 50 in the study who has just moved the sofa into the middle of the floor. Now he rolls up his sleeve with one hand and holds a slim bamboo cane in the other.

In her room, Lesley slips off the black trouser-suit and stands most delectably attired in a snug white singlet which ends at her waist, and a pair of sheer nylon tights the colour of rich honey. She stands before the mirror with the same sulky look and combs the fringe of her fair urchin crop with her fingers. The admirer in the potato field would have paid a king’s ransom to see her now. From the front, the sheer honey-toned tights shape the trim length of Lesley’s thighs, the light pubic hair pressed prettily as fern in her loins. At the back, the nylon seat moulds the firmed-out cheeks of Lesley’s bottom. Between the moon-like pallor of the two globes, the dusky cleavage is mistily visible.

Putting her hands to the waistband of the tights, Lesley peels them down, the pale hip-flesh rising freer and a little fuller as the elastic tightness draws clear. Lesley’s backside is certainly one of her best features, its slight erotic maturity more appealing now than when she was a bride of 19 or 20.

Clad only in her singlet, Lesley slips down the passageway. To her surprise the bathroom door is locked. She looks round and sees Judi.

‘There’s a new scenario tonight,’ says Judi. ‘Mr Stock is in the study. Don’t keep him waiting.’

The truth appears! Behind closed doors in this remote house on a small island, the occupants play love-games. Everyone is a volunteer who agrees to play by the rules of the game. In Lesley’s case she is what was known in the 1940s as a ‘slapper-at’, an apparently snooty young woman whose true thrill came from being the victim in amateur dramas of discipline and chastisement. Sometimes the tannings were for real and the subject, having agreed to the rules, could not retract. On other occasions she might be the apparent victim of a severe lashing in a tiled punishment cell. No pain would be felt, not a tear shed. Whatever its appearance, the whip was about as harmful as a rolled-up newspaper. She was no more hurt by it than an actor would be shot dead in the course of an Agatha Christie play, but the symbolism would be potently erotic. At other times the chastisement was real enough.

Whatever the set-up, the actors were willing.

Back to Judi, a blonde young woman of 30, hair strained back in a short pigtail, clad in jodhpurs and riding-shirt.

‘There’s a new scenario tonight, Lesley. Don’t keep us waiting.’

‘No! I can’t! Not now!’

Mere description cannot tell where the game leaves off and reality begins.

Anton comes from another room. He walks round Lesley, noting the alarm and sullenness in her fair-skinned features, admiring the way her lower back curves inward where the singlet ends, and then the bare swell of her backside just below it. The cheeks are pressed together just now in a show of modesty.

‘You don’t know Mr Stock, do you, Lesley? He was a reformatory master in the States. He used to put boys in his charge bare-buttocked over his study sofa and bamboo them furiously! Commendable enthusiasm. A pity he had to retire early.’ Pure fiction, in all probability, but Lesley is willing to believe her. Then: ‘He’s waiting for you now. You were told to do certain work in the potato-field this afternoon. It wasn’t finished.’

‘But I can’t!’ There is a petulant flick of her parted fringe, a whining sullenness like a badly brought-up little girl.

‘What choice do you have, Lesley?’ Judi takes the towel from her. The argument is already settled. The appeal of these love-games to many participants is that they rely so much on verbal excitement where corporal punishment is not essential, though it inevitably follows.

Lesley bows her head slightly and precedes her two escorts up the stairs. Walking behind her they cannot help admiring the long trimness of her white legs and thighs. Her hips have an exaggerated feminine sway at each step. The firmly mature cheeks of Lesley’s bottom arch out and contort alternately.

‘You’ll be caned bottom-upwards over the sofa cushions, Lesley,’ says Judi. ‘But don’t count on turning Mr Stock’s mind to other things. A quick open-legged flash between strokes will be just a waste of effort. He doesn’t seduce easily.’

There is silence for a moment as they study Lesley’s rear view on the remainder of the stairs. At the top Anton advises her: ‘Count if you want to, Lesley. It can help. Six or 12 or…’

There is a sudden catch in Lesley’s breath. Under the parted fringe of her urchin crop the blue eyes and the firm arrogant young face are filled with the first signs of alarm. Judi puts an arm round the young wife’s bare waist, then lets the palm smooth over Lesley’s seat-cheeks.

‘Butterflies in the tummy, Lesley? You’ll need to be a really brave girl this time, seeing as Mr Stock is punishing you.’

Her protests overruled, the young married woman is escorted into the spacious sunlit room. A man of 50, thick-set and burly, stands in his shirt-sleeves. The bamboo he flexes in his hands has a spring like a rapier. His mouth is set thin and hard. In his eyes Lesley sees a cold glimmer of desire flare into sudden fire. Whoever he may be, the casting is perfect. His eyes rove over the lower nudity of her body, the slight proud swell of her belly, the fair-haired triangle and long white thighs. Turning, he admires the statuesque cheeks of Lesley’s 28-year-old bottom.

She is told to stand quite still. The others draw back. Mr Stock comes up and stands very close. A hardening bulge in his trouser front presses against her hand and, with the instinct of a young woman who has slept around, Lesley begins to finger it, not daring to turn her face to him. Suddenly she stops, scared by the hardening excitement, knowing how pitiless her ordeal will be with him in this state.

‘Lie bottom-upwards over the sofa-cushions, Lesley!’ Mr Stock says sharply. ‘Use the two thick rubber cushions under your loins to make your behind swell out more fully! Pull the hem of your singlet up above your waist. Let’s see your backside properly bared for correction!’

However real the caning itself, the drama depends upon this creative dialogue for heightening the thrill of the game. Lesley kneels forward, sprawling on her belly over the cushions, legs together tightly and arms held at full stretch before her. The excitement may also be increased by turning the game into a penalty for something which Lesley has done, thus making her feel guilt and the need to expiate it.

‘You’re getting what you deserve, Lesley,’ says Judi firmly, ‘a promiscuous young wife who cheats on her marriage and kids has earned a thrashing. Still, you can forget about marriage and kids, even your womanhood, as far as Mr Stock is concerned. To him, you’re simply a miscreant requiring punishment. Mind you, he’ll enjoy it much more with such a good-looking young woman as you, with your firm and impertinent bottom and your page-boy hairstyle!’

This dialogue is no more than an adult version of ‘The bogey man will get you if you don’t look out’. In such charades it is necessary for another reason. Now the tight-lipped Mr Stock measures the rigidly whippy bamboo across the bare cheeks of Lesley’s firmly mature bottom. Under the long parted fringe of her urchin-crop the young wife’s blue eyes are clouded with apprehension, the firm sulky features are a picture of anxiety. The two white seat-curves of Lesley’s backside tense and shift with uncontrollable apprehension. He raises the bamboo and brings it down with an ear-splitting smack across the pale crowns of Lesley’s buttocks. She gasps at the sheer intensity of the naked smart. The ardent disciplinarian knows from experience that the initial smart will expand like a swelling torment over several seconds, turning the gasp to a cry. He will aim the next one to catch her just as the first one reaches its climax. No respite is allowed for Lesley to contain the anguish of one stroke of the bamboo before the next one is given...

But is the cane a real bamboo? Are all the strokes given in earnest? That must depend on the actors, most of all on the chastiser who actually gives the punishment. To that extent you must answer the question for yourself by putting yourself in the place of Mr Stock.

You stand there with cane in hand. Lesley sprawls on her belly over the sofa cushions, the high crown of her cropped fair hair with its parted fringe is turned. Confronting you are the aloof blue eyes, the firm pale features with that wilful sulkiness in mouth and jaw. She is bare from the singlet hem at her waist down to her heels. The trim maturity of her long thighs and legs leads to the cheeks of Lesley’s bottom, those pale moons nicely firmed out by child-rearing.

Will it be all in fun? Or will you give her a really excruciating caning? A game may be enough. Yet she has never been punished for promiscuity and spoilt selfishness. Perhaps she needs to be. In that case will you allot a number of strokes or merely continue to cane Lesley’s bare backside until you are satisfied with her? Those who regard the discipline as more important than the fun may argue that the young woman’s arrogance and self-centredness need to be overcome. Only with Lesley weeping, helpless and contrite at last, will they feel able to approach and comfort her.

Lesley’s bottom-cheeks, marked by the smarting willow-pattern of bamboo, may yet need further discipline. By reminding her of selfish and immoral conduct for which she is being punished, she will accept the justice of the caning, though it will not help her to bear the anguish. Your words are very important...

Such dramas are acted out of sight and earshot of the world for very good reasons. Suppose Lesley had been caned in a wide-windowed downstairs room, the afternoon sunlight streaming in. She would presumably have undressed there, in front of Mr Stock and the others. They would perhaps have bent her over a tall stool, the light from the window falling on the target. The caning might have been prolonged and most painful, accompanied by weeping and reprimands.

When she was at last permitted to straighten up, Lesley might well have turned to the window and given a cry of dismay and anger at what she saw on the public footpath running along immediately outside.

The middle-aged man who so admired her in the potato field is perhaps just putting the lens cap on his camera. From the wall he takes several spools of film — 36 shots on each. Clearly, he has been there all the time. With a knowing grin at Lesley he puts the spools of film in his pocket and walks away. There will be some 200 pictures, perhaps. Full-scale portraits of Lesley’s face in every state from urchin-cropped indifference to brimming eyes and wailing mouth. There will be general views of her undressing, bending, writhing under discipline. No doubt there will be a score of close-ups of Lesley’s bottom at every stage of punishment — from unblemished bottom-moons to buttocks embroidered by numerous bamboo stripes, seat-cheeks writhing. Several will show Lesley’s full rear view complete in every detail.

Inevitably, in a few days there will be a parcel addressed to her, about 12 inches by ten and very thick. Copies of his new portfolio. So it’s in Lesley’s interest most of all that the punishments should take place where there will be no intrusions of this kind, no embarrassing after-effects.

As the summer visitors leave the island, the boats are fewer and only the few permanent residents remain. By this time, the old house will contain those who are affluent enough to remain or earn a living there, and those like Lesley who have nowhere else to go. So the fantasy of a House of Correction becomes a long winter reality. The nights as well as the days are occupied by its rituals. There are changes in the games which take up increasingly more and more time.

----//----

In the small hours of a warm October night, Lesley lies on the silk cover of the bed in her room, waking and sleeping. She lies on her side, wearing black leather ornaments rather than clothes. She is naked but for wrist-cuffs, anklets, collar and waist-belt, the effects of which are purely decorative. Extremely decorative. She will wake as the man enters, even if she has not done so already. It may be her lover or a stranger, but she has been warned that the drama of chastisement is to be played again that night, and in earnest.

The rules forbid her to turn and look at the man. So the young wife lies there on her side with her back to him, hips arched backward as she curves forward from the waist. The soft light of a bedside lamp is directed on the bare pallor of Lesley’s seat and the backs of her upper thighs. The stranger lies down behind her, lower in the bed, eyes level with her hips, or rather with the seat of this 28-year-old urchin-cropped Venus.

The full pale moons of Lesley’s bottom are fully and suggestively presented to him. A mirror has been placed so that if the man chooses he may enjoy a view of her face. He may be intrigued by the short-cut fair hair shaped to her head with its parted fringe. Perhaps he wishes to read her character in those aloof blue eyes and fair-skinned sulky features.

Lesley is obliged to present her backside some 18 inches before his eyes. Even this is not good enough.

‘Lean forward further, Lesley,’ he says, not satisfied until Lesley’s bottom is thrust right out at him. His fingers roam lightly over the cheeks and between the cheeks, over the upper thighs, exploring her. Gently he tells her that in a little while he will whip her for adultery as young women are whipped for infidelity in the strictest countries. His fingers return constantly to Lesley’s behind, tantalising it with caresses which will linger like a menace.

He questions her gently about her upbringing and education, her marriage and lovers. What demands were made upon her by these men? What submissions to them did she make?

He kisses the nape of her neck, just below the cut of her fair hair. His lips pout softly on her smooth white back, working down to the inward curve at the rear of her waist. He kisses her firm young hips in all their erotic maturity, her long thighs and their soft haired pouch. With her seat still thrust out towards him he even kisses the full pale moons of Lesley’s bottom.

By now the adjoining suite, where the discipline will be administered, is flooded with light. A heavy gymnastic horse, over the padded top of which she will be requested to arrange herself bottom-uppermost, is drawn to the middle of the tiled floor. A slim bamboo rattles on the table. Lesley gives an involuntary shiver. Her admirer fondles her.

‘Does that sound frighten you, Lesley?’ Light fingertips fondling her sentenced bottom.

There is a sudden catch in Lesley’s breath.

‘You remember the rules, then?’ he says savouring his exquisite authority. ‘A judicial caning for promiscuity. Quite impersonal, and in front of witnesses.’

The time has come. Lesley whispers a private request as she gets up from the bed.

‘Of course not, Lesley! The knickers you normally wear are black stretch-briefs, aren’t they? You certainly aren’t allowed to wear them for an official caning!’

‘But those people will be watching me!’

‘They’re only human, Lesley. They’ll want to see your bare bottom!’

There are more subterfuges. In default of knickers, Lesley asks for a moment with a damp flannel. This too is dismissed as a mere delaying tactic. Then she walks with urchin-crop bowed into the chamber.

She is to be caned for adultery, such is the scenario. It is a crime which she has committed and for which she feels some genuine guilt. Moreover it is an offence for which the law of church and state long prescribed such a punishment. The number of strokes given traditionally depended on the whim of the attending justices.

The witnesses in the ritual, men and women, stand round the walls of the white-tiled suite. Lesley is ordered to lie over the horse. Pedantic instructions are given as to precise posturing. The scope for drama in this is clear enough. In a display of self-conscious modesty the urchin-cropped adulteress tries to assume the punishment posture without presenting her full rear view.

‘Get your backside right over the top, Lesley!’ says the chastiser sharply, ‘you were keen enough to show yourself to your lovers! The men who will cane you here have a much better right than them to see everything you’ve got to show them!’

One of the female witnesses notices the absence of certain elastic-prints on Lesley’s bum-cheeks. The black stretch-briefs she wears should have left a slight indentation of their hem, arching up high and tight over each cheek of Lesley’s bottom.

‘You’ve been lying on the bed without your pants on, Lesley,’ says the young woman, ‘Why? What have you been doing to yourself?’

Even after several years of marriage, Lesley’s blue eyes under her little-boy fringe are shocked to immobility by this.

‘Answer the question, Lesley!’ says the chastiser sharply.

‘I wasn’t allowed to wear them tonight!’ Lesley’s is the whining voice of a sulky schoolgirl replying under compulsion.

The chastiser takes his supple bamboo.

‘Very well, Lesley. You’ve behaved like a selfish little girl, now you must be punished like one. Get your behind even more tightly over the block. Turn your face for the others to see!’

The firm pale moons of Lesley’s bottom are now maturely filled out by her pose. Reluctantly she turns the fair, high-crowned crop. The snooty blue eyes are truly woebegone, the sulky mouth and sullen jaw testifying to her forlornness.

Lesley is then made to wait in her posture of humiliation. The purpose of this interval is to raise her thunderous emotions to a pitch of almost unbearable and fearful excitement, terror fluttering in her belly and her pulse racing with the suspense. Is the chastiser her own husband, in reality? Is this the price of reconciliation? How will she take her beating?

He touches the cane lightly across the pale cheeks of her seat, tap-tapping to take his aim. Then with an ear-splitting smack he brings the bamboo down across the young wife’s firmly mature buttocks. She gasps, her eyes wide and dismayed at the impact. The savage smart causes her behind to tense and squirm. A second high-pitched swish, and then the tiled walls ring to the sound of the stroke whipping home across the tautly broadened moons of Lesley’s backside. The first thin marks appear. He canes her several times across the fullest width of her seat. Her cries grow shriller.

‘Don’t try to turn your backside away, Lesley! You won’t like it if the cane catches you on the flank! Those two across the backs of your thighs were your own fault for not keeping still. They won’t be counted either!’

The promiscuous young wife hits the top of her soprano range as he aims several smarting impacts low across Lesley’s bottom-cheeks. The firm statuesque cheeks of Lesley’s arse are writhing and jiggling as if on a red-hot saddle. For all of the assembled witnesses, it is a most affecting and exciting spectacle.

‘Ten strokes given, and ten to come, Lesley,’ says Judi.

‘I’ve had sixteen!’ she yells.

‘Don’t try to cheat the count, Lesley!’

Lips pressed hard he surveys Lesley’s backside closely and canes across the stripes already given. The response is frantic. He canes aslant them again, and then again. Lesley is tasting her own tears on her lips now, eyes brimming and mouth wide.

‘I’ve had twenty!’ A new pitch of shrillness is reached.

‘Don’t cheat, Lesley! Twelve given, eight to come!’

‘No! Oh, no!’

So it continues. Which count is correct? The matter is academic. In these situations, naturally, it is the chastiser’s arithmetic which prevails.

‘Don’t misbehave, Lesley!’ he says at one dangerous moment, ‘it will mean taking you back to the beginning and starting again. I’d very much like to do that!’

In this punishment, so important in her life and behaviour, the culprit is left in no doubt. The chastiser is sexually roused by the sight of Lesley with her boyish crop presenting her firmly mature feminine bottom to him in this way. He reassures her that he enjoys caning her and that she need not waste her breath in vain appeals. He intimates to Lesley that, if it were not for the witnesses, he would...

Later, Lesley, in tears and walking gingerly, is led back to the bed by her chastiser. She prefers to lie over it on her belly, the pillows under her loins to raise her seat. He sits, circles her waist and looks down at the conveniently presented cheeks of Lesley’s seat. The cane is close to hand.

‘Not quite so snooty and arrogant now, Lesley?’ he asks. ‘So much for the liberated young woman! I’m going to put you through a very strict obedience test in a moment. You can imagine what will happen at your first refusal.’

The loiterers in the next room hear commands for her to kneel before him, to stand wide astride, for Lesley to turn her back to his chair and bend over tightly.

‘You really want to be a good little girl now, don’t you Lesley? I’ve never known you so eager before. Lie still now.’

Unlike the staged scenes of the theatre, such games as this are strictly for two or more players. On that island in the long winter months, the lighthouse man would notice, several nights in the week, the light go on in Lesley’s room in the small hours. Then the light of the adjoining suite would go on and stay on for an hour or two.

Next morning, the daily cleaner would find the heavy gymnastic horse still in the middle of the tiled floor. Impassively she would clean round it, picking up Lesley’s black stretch-briefs discarded on the tiling. Close by lies a bamboo and several trodden-out cigarette butts.

Yet even such games are not without their dangers. Lesley does not enjoy being caned, in the sense of finding pleasure in the strokes. Her excitement comes from the fearful anticipation and from reliving the scene painlessly afterwards, especially her own screams and pleadings, the reprimands of the chastiser and the recollected burning smart of the punishment instruments. The risk is that such highly-charged excitement might make her unable to respond to physical love without so powerful a stimulus.

A 28-year-old wife who cuts her hair boy-style and displays her proud young seat in tight jeans or trousers, is presumably aware of the effect on men, if she is an educated and aware young woman. So the constant hours of attention to Lesley’s bottom, kind and cruel, is likely to shift her sexual centre of gravity, if continued month after month. In the boredom of the long-isolated winter months, she is likely to crave fetishistic treatments of increasing elaboration and intensity. Almost everything in the male-female relationship is capable of exploitation for undesirable purposes. These amateur theatricals are no exception. The best prevention, in this case, is for those concerned to remember the rules and — in the best British sense — to play the game.

The love-play is only a scenario. Would the chastisement be real or pretended if you were the actor chosen to deal with Lesley behind closed doors?