Gordon Beauchamp looked out at the clear blue sky and frowned. He hated the peaceful clean scene. He hated the myriad shades of green that formed the trees that framed the town in the valley. The pretty crafted Cotswold stone buildings where his family had lived for centuries looked deceptively permanent. He hated it because it was a lie. There was little peace or beauty in the world while just a few miles away bombs fell on Bristol and the skies were marred by German bombers, specs against the sky like an unwelcome swarm in summer.
When the war had begun her had volunteered his services to his old regiment only to be told he was too old. He scratched unconsciously at the little bit of grey at his temple at the memory. Too old, he fumed; he was still nearer 40 than 50.
A few months later being desperate for men they had changed their mind, only this time he had failed the medical. He massaged his right leg and felt it twinge. Most days he did not even limp, he thought defensively.
“Anyway, captain of industry and all that,” the oh-so-polite-major at the War Office had said, “You are needed here.”
Gordon clenched and unclenched his fist. That was another lie. Oh sure he owned the factory, but he was hardly a hands-on sort of chap. Since his father had died he had never been more than one voice on the board.
Then intruding on his gloom came the unmistakably elegant footsteps on the landing above and he paused in his thoughts. Miss le Strange, he realised, always so well turned out and dignified. The thunderous footfalls on the hall tiles leading from the kitchen were a marked contrast to his mood.
Before Daphne le Strange could descend, Megan Jones came passed him at a lick, one arm in her coat and the other holding a slice of toast to her mouth on which she nibbled.
“Good morning Mr Beech-ham,” she sang out like an out of tune Welsh harp as she tumbled by.
A pretty girl in her early 20s, she was always in a rush. Gordon noted her straight black hair where it had escaped her hastily arranged hair pins. She had a round pretty face, and having already changed into her factory overalls he could see that round pretty much summed her up. Not that she was fat, not at all, just… round; a series of circles at her breasts and hips, which were emphasised by her short stature.
Not like the tall elegant Daphne le Strange who now descended the staircase in stylish long green coat with matching skirt like she was off to the theatre she had starred in before the war. She always changed into her overalls at the factory; in fact he had never seen her in them.
“Good morning Mr Beauchamp,” she said crisply, like a princess he thought.
“Good morning Miss le Strange,” Gordon inclined his head and smiled.
She glided past him and out of the door.
His day somewhat lifted, he tried to return to his gloomy thoughts of before. He had no right of relief from this endless war. Not while his country men were dying. However, he remembered the spitfire he had bought with his own money and the best part of another he had mobilised the townsfolk to raise the funds for. It was something.
Just like it was something that he was accommodating three of his factory workers in his home, it all helped the war effort. Three workers, he remembered looking at his watch.
“Miss Meadows,” he called, “Are you about?”
Are you even up yet, he thought in irritation.
Gordon went into the kitchen to look for any sign that the hapless Jeanie Meadows had been down for breakfast and had already gone. There was none. Surely… he thought in exasperation, she would not oversleep again.
Jeanie was the youngest of his three lodgers. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think she had yet turned 20. She was pretty blonde thing, always nervous and eager, if often failing, to please. She had already overslept twice that week and she had yet to either pay her rent or hand over her ration book.
Going to the foot of the stairs he looked forlornly up towards her room wishing that Daphne or Megan had not already left and could go to her in his stead so he wouldn’t have to again intrude in a female world.
“Miss Meadows,” he yelled, hating the indignity of it.
Somewhere up above something stirred. Then it was if a herd of elephants had been let lose upon his upstairs hall and the passage that led to the women’s shared bathroom. Five minutes later a rather sheepish Jeanie emerged at the top of the stairs and tentatively began to come down.
“Miss Meadows you’re late. Again,” Gordon growled.
“I know but…” Jeanie whined.
“And I do hope you have found your ration book, you know Mrs Berkley will be in today to clean house and organise our provisions,” Gordon said sharply.
Jeanie bit her lip.
Gordon sighed. “The rent, you were paid two days ago, you do have the rent?”
As Jeanie reached the foot of the stairs she shook her head and suddenly took an interest in the floor.
“I’m sorry Mr Bo-champ,” she squeaked and pulled a face.
“It’s pronounced Beacham,” he said evenly, correcting her for the eighth or ninth time.
“Sorry Mr Beauchamp,” she winced, pronouncing more or less correctly this time, “I am sorry too about the money and… well I had to buy a dress… oh… oh… that’s where I left my ration book.”
Gordon closed his eyes and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“A dress?” he asked.
“Ooh,” Jeanie wailed, “Are you ever so cross? I am in trouble aren’t I?”
No I am in trouble, Gordon thought wearily.
“Are you going to spank me?” Jeanie said meekly. “I bet I will get a spanking when I get home, when my Dad finds out. Oh you won’t send me home, will you? I couldn’t bear it. I will do better, honest I will.”
He had spanked a silly girl or two from the village before now. And in the past he had even spanked his late wife. But they were all country girls and mostly not in his employ. They had expected that kind of handling. These city girls were not used to a firm hand or so he had thought.
“And if I were to spank you, do you think you will remember to get up on time… maybe pay the rent…?”
He didn’t think so.
Jeanie looked up at him hopefully now. Perhaps she was afraid she would be sent home she said, “Oh I am sure I would… I mean… well I know I deserve it and… and…”
Gordon frowned, he was missing something.
“Dad said… Mum and Dad said… I mean I was to tell you, should have told you I mean…” Jeanie kicked at her left foot with her right and looked at the floor again.
“Miss Meadows? What are you trying to say?”
“I was to tell you that if I didn’t behave you were to spank my bottom.” Jeanie was blushing furiously at this admission.
“I see,” Gordon frowned again, “And why didn’t you tell me this when you arrived?”
“I forgot,” she lied.
Gordon let out a heavy sigh. Then he said, “Very well, you will come to my study after tea tonight, with your ration book mind, and we will discuss your behaviour.”
“Yes Sir,” Jeanie said miserably.
“Now, wasn’t there somewhere you had to be?”
“To be Sir? Oh… oh… I’m late,” Jeanie wailed and without a backward glance she was gone.
*
After supper that evening Jeanie walked nervously to the study where Gordon was waiting. It was an old fashioned room, like something out of a picture show with Olivier or Ronald Coleman. She blushed. Mr Beauchamp did look rather like Ronald Coleman, she thought. Hadn’t he played a strict headmaster in one of his films?
She had no need to knock as the door was open and he could see her standing there from his desk.
“Ah Miss Meadows, come in,” he said in a stern voice.
“Shall I… shall close the door?” she asked shyly.
He nodded and indicated that she should.
As she approached she saw a tortoiseshell hairbrush on his desk; an old-fashioned type with a smooth back and a long straight handle.
He saw her looking at it and explained, “My late wife’s.”
“I had heard that posh people spanked with a hairbrush,” Jeanie said in a small voice to hide her shyness. “My Dad uses a slipper.”
“Posh people eh?” he smiled at this and then added, “My wife was about your age when we first got married.”
“Did you spank her too? With that I mean?” Jeanie was wide-eyed with the romance of the emerging story and imagined Mrs Beauchamp across Mr Beauchamp’s knee.
“Right up until her illness nearly 10 years ago,” Gordon said in a sad voice, for a moment averting his eyes.
“Oh gosh,” Jeanie gasped, “Then I am probably never going to be too old.”
“Tell me, how are you normally spanked?” Gordon asked as he picked up the brush.
Jeanie followed it with her eyes and hugged herself nervously.
“Over his knee with the slipper on my… my… with my… my things down.” Jeanie worried her lip with her teeth as she hesitantly explained.
Gordon studied her shapeless Oxford Bags and marvelled at the atrocious clothes young girls were wearing these days. It is the war I suppose, he thought bitterly.
Seeing where he was looking, Jeanie self-consciously patted at her trousers and tugged at the high waist with her thumbs. Gordon nodded as he stood up and moved his chair away from the desk.
Jeanie blushed and turned away as she slid the loose dark breeches down over her white cotton scanties. Not that Gordon saw that much, ever the gentleman he had also turned his back.
“Thank you for not sending me away, I am ever so sorry about the mess I made of things,” Jeanie said in a sorrowful voice once she had removed her bags.
Gordon turned around and eyed the girl in her underwear nervously. When he had been married, tanning the bare backside of the occasional village wench had not seemed so inappropriate.
“I think you should know that there was never a question of you being sent away. I simple wish you to buck your ideas up,” Gordon said firmly.
“Then I suppose I should thank you for taking the trouble,” Jeanie said meekly.
Taking up the hairbrush Gordon sat down and beckoned her to him.
“Time to address the matter in hand,” he said with a cough.
Jeanie gulped and moved forward until she was close enough to tumble over Gordon’s knee.
As her bottom arched up at him he hooked a thumb in her waistband and slid the clinging white cotton covering over her bulging bottom and down her thighs. Acutely aware that she was exposed to the gaze of a man, Jeanie gave a little gasp.
“There are rules in this house and in this world,” Gordon growled as he pressed the flat of the brush to Jeanie’s hindquarters.
“Yes Sir,” Jeanie squeaked.
The blood was rushing to her draped head, aiding the blush of her undignified position. It was embarrassing, scary and somehow comforting all at once. Oddly though, she thought of Ronald Coleman again.
“There is a war on and better men than you or I, are dying out there, women too,” Gordon continued angrily. “And yet, what do you do? Buy dresses with rent money. Lose your ration book. And… and… laze around in bed.”
“Ooh,” Jeanie wailed as tears pricked at her eyes.
Mr Beauchamp was right, she had been awful. Her blush now was from shame as well.
“Well I won’t have it,” Gordon snapped, bringing the brush down sharply across Jeanie’s bare bottom.
“Ah,” Jeanie grunted and kicked her legs.
“I won’t have it,” Gordon raged and spanked her again.
“I’m sorry Mr Beauchamp,” Jeanie gave out in a high pitched wail.
The next solid thwack added to an already growing red mark on her bottom and caused her to again kicker legs and squeal in distress.
“Do you hear me?” Gordon growled.
“Yes Sir,” Jeanie said miserably as she winced through another blast of the brush. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Are you? Are you? Are you?” Gordon repeated over and over, spanking Jeanie’s vulnerable bottom each time.
“I am Sir, really I am,” she squeaked urgently and shaking her bottom as if to throw loose the sting.
“I ought to spank you ‘til bed time, I ought to spank you every night until you pay the rent,” Gordon all but bellowed as he spanked on.
“Ooh, no Sir,” Jeanie wailed as tears sprang to her eyes. “I mean, yes Sir… ahhh, I mean… oh, oh, ooh.”
“If you get up late one more time or… or… just once and you’ll get more of the same,” Gordon spluttered.
“Yes Sir, but I won’t,” Jeanie gasped, her words competing with her laboured breathing.
“Right, now you can go and stand and face the wall over there and you will remain there as quiet as a church mouse for the rest of the evening.”
“Yes Sir,” Jeanie said, at last breaking to full sobs as she hastened to obey.
As she scurried away she tugged at her cotton scanties.
“Leave them down,” Gordon said paternally, “And put your hands on your head.”
“Yes Sir,” Jeanie said ruefully as she sniffed.
Gordon nodded in satisfaction as he took a final look at the now compliant girl before opening the door and leaving the room.
“That’s the way to do it Sir,” Megan chuckled from a place sitting on the stairs where she had been clearly listening. “If I had behaved like her, why… I would have got the strap on my bare arse back home.”
“Very educational I am sure,” Daphne said snootily as she pushed passed her colleague and ascended the stairs. “I’m getting away from all this vulgar tomfoolery.”
“Oh get you,” Megan said humorously, “Like you haven’t been loitering to listen in.”
“I have not,” Daphne said indignantly, “I was… I… oh,” with a final harrumph, she flounced off.
“Put in the corner as well, look you,” Megan said to Gordon in admiration. “Now there’s posh.”
Gordon nodded absently as he watched Daphne ascend the stairs.
“Now there’s one who could do with a tanned backside,” Megan said slyly, following his gaze.
Yes indeed, Gordon thought.
To be continued.
