by Stanlegh Meresith
"Oh, sh...ugar!" Frankie turned away, hiding her face with a hand.
Her father had just walked in.
It was one o'clock in the morning, April 20th 1969, and she was sitting on a bench in Chelsea Police station, trembling like a jelly in an earthquake. Billy was in a cell somewhere in the bowels of the building, and she was in the deepest doo-doo of her seventeen-year-old life.
Her father approached the duty sergeant. "Francesca Anderson?" Just the two words, blunt like him.
The sergeant nodded in Frankie's direction. Her father gave her a cursory glance - as if checking recovered goods for any obvious signs of damage - then turned back to the sergeant, confirming the details he'd been given on the phone.
Frankie clutched her knees and looked at the floor.
"Thanks," she heard. "I'll take it from here."
Footsteps.
"All right, Missy, time to go home."
Hoisted up by a hand under her armpit, she stumbled sideways to the exit in her father's grip. The sergeant gave her a pitying shake of the head.
The silent treatment she could handle. That was standard Daddy, and she welcomed it as he drove tight-lipped back to their house in Mayfair. What she hated was not knowing when he'd take his paddle to her butt. It could be days. Five was the record (when she'd played hooky from school twice in a month). It was part of the punishment, making her wait after one of her 'mistakes', of which she'd made plenty over the past three years.
This one, though, was definitely the worst ever. To her mind, of course, the real mistake was getting caught - and even that was Billy's fault. It was he who'd suggested climbing over the railings into the private gardens in Eaton Square to smoke a joint. But the moment they were busted, she knew she'd outdone herself.
The family had moved to London in January when her father joined the embassy staff as Special Attache to the Ambassador recently appointed by the in-coming President. Frankie hated Nixon almost as much as she did her father's paddle, but she was happy to have swapped Athens, Georgia, for swinging London, and, boy, had she been living it up! Her father worked twelve-hour days, her mother was too busy shopping and mixing martinis to notice what her oldest was up to, and the international school she attended was run like a youth club (some of the male teachers even had long hair!). It'd been a total gas.
As it turned out, she waited a full week for the paddling, and that wasn't the worst of it.
Home early for the purpose, her father called her downstairs to the living-room. Her mother and sister eyed her with pity from the sofa while Daddy, paddle in hand, rolled up his right sleeve. She stood to attention, ass tingling beneath her tight blue jeans while he counted off the number of 'mistakes' she'd managed to make in a single night. As bad as it sounded, she was more concerned about the number of swats she'd be getting - always the last item on his list before he let rip on her rear.
When he was done with the lecture, she turned and bent, hands on her knees, heart thumping.
"Ten."
She lowered her head and whimpered. Adjusting her feet for a sturdier stance, she gripped her knees tight and tried to ready herself.
Crack!
"Oof!"
She rocked forward onto her toes, absorbing the thud, then squealed as the burn kicked in. Oh Jeez! I'm not going to survive this. The first was always a shock, but it was easy compared to what followed. On the lower half of her butt, each fresh swat seemed to double the pain.
Crack!
"Ouch!"
Now it really burned!
Crack!
"AOOWWW!"
She tossed her head, squeezing her knee-caps so hard she heard a knuckle crack. She panted hard while her butt twisted and wriggled beyond her control.
The fourth had her up and arching her back, hands flapping as she grimaced at the ceiling. But she bent again fast, knowing the rule: delay him unduly and you got a rapid one-two for the next.
And on he swung, her Republican Daddy, cruel to be kind - or so he claimed - while she screeched and wailed, leapt up and jigged, all dignity lost in a red haze of pain as each pummelling impact scorched her sorry ass.
By the tenth, she was so numb she felt only the thud, which wasn't to say her butt wasn't already a swollen furnace, throbbing white heat.
Mistaking her sobbing for child-like repentance, her father took her in his arms and whispered forgiveness before releasing her to wince and hobble her way back to her room. Once there, she unzipped her jeans, peeled her panties from her raw, bruised flesh and crawled onto her bed with a groan. Lying there grimacing, waiting for the pain to ease, she thought again how pointless it was. She was seventeen, and he wasn't going to change how she lived her life. To her mind, she was beyond his command - his old road was rapidly ageing - and he could paddle her all he liked, he wouldn't stop her trying to be free - free to taste anything new under the sun she could find. It was worth a blistered butt. Worth it every time.
Meanwhile, however, she'd been grounded for a month, her belatedly anxious mother charged with monitoring her every move, and she had no way of finding out what had happened to Billy. But she knew Mom would soon grow lax again, and she'd at least be able to phone him, maybe even slip out for a meeting - if he wasn't still in custody.
She was pondering these plans when her father knocked. She covered herself and let him in for the usual parental blah-blah about how concerned they were for her welfare (no mention, of course, of concern for the welfare of her butt). But it was strange how the power shifted after a paddling: suddenly, it was like he was the supplicant, she the bestower of mercy. It wasn't, she guessed, so much that he felt bad about tearing up her ass as that he'd already played his best card (at least till the next time).
But then the usual blah-blah took an ominous turn, and that's when he dropped the bombshell about the phone calls he'd been making, the exclusive boarding-school he'd found for her.
"Grey-what?" she cried, horrified.
"Greystones, honey. It's a top British school."
"Grey stones? It sounds like a freaking graveyard!"
He winced.
She shook her head in disbelief, then her face crumpled and yesteryear's tears really did begin to flow. "You're... you're sending me away?"
She wept like a child, but no amount of new-found remorse could sway him.
"You start on Sunday, honey, and that's the way it is. They say it's beautiful, right in the country, somewhere called the Sussex Downs, lots of fresh air. I spoke with the Headmistress, and she's making an exception by admitting you now. Mom's taking you shopping tomorrow - there's a long list of stuff they need you to have. It's a high-class place, Francesca - it's where the top Brits send their girls."
And that was it. Opening her damp eyes wide, she did manage to wangle permission to see Billy (in her mother's presence) once more to say goodbye, but she was still grounded for the interim.
After a sullenly silent dinner on an extra-cushioned seat, she returned to her room and climbed straight into bed. Lying awake till well past midnight, she tried to picture her radically adjusted future, shuddering at the thought of being locked up with these 'top Brit girls'.
"Ah, Margaret, there you are. Thank you for coming over."
Dorothy Hurst, Headmistress of Greystones Boarding School for Girls, rose from the desk in her study and greeted the Housemistress of Vicky's - officially 'Victoria', named, like the other houses in the school, after an English queen. A keen sportswoman in her late forties, Miss Margaret Atmore had served in her current role since 1963.
"Good holiday?" asked Dorothy. "The Lake District, wasn't it?"
"Yes, wonderful, thank you. It rained every day, of course, but that didn't stop me exploring the fells. Beautiful countryside, Dorothy, absolutely breath-taking - when you can see it, that is."
"Ha! Well, it's been rather nice down here, and it says in the Telegraph that we're set for a lovely summer."
"Yes, I saw that, but I never trust weather forecasts beyond a day or two. Not in England, anyway."
Dorothy chuckled. "Indeed." She resumed her seat and waved her colleague to another. "The reason I called, Margaret, is that we've got a new girl starting on Sunday, and I wanted to sound you out about having her in Vicky's."
"Oh yes?"
"She's American, and I know you had a spell teaching over there before you joined us, so I thought..."
"Yes, of course. How old is she?"
"Seventeen. She'll be joining the lower sixth."
"Subjects?"
"Art, Drama and English."
"Hm, well, there's a space in Dorm 2 on the first floor. As it happens, that's where I moved Grenville and Bianchi after Christmas - they both do Art and Drama, and they're friendly girls. I know there was that trouble before Christmas, but..."
Dorothy shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, well, they seem to have learnt their lesson, don't they? I'm sure they'll be helpful. But I must warn you that we know very little about this American. Her father rang last week; sounded rather desperate. Said she's been mixing with the wrong crowd and needs somewhere secluded to get her back on track."
"Uh oh!"
"Quite."
Actually, Margaret rather enjoyed the challenge of troublesome girls, of whom she already had quite a number in Vicky's. Unfazed by teenage rebelliousness, she found that common sense and a firm hand worked wonders. In her case, the firm hand took the form of a leather-soled slipper, and for more serious cases, a wooden paddle she'd acquired during her time teaching at a private school in New England.
"But isn't it rather unusual to admit a girl mid-year?"
Dorothy winced. "Yes, Margaret. And of course I turned the man down at first - quite firmly in fact. But he was very insistent - works at the American embassy in London, rather high up, I fancy - and... I know this shouldn't sway us, but he offered to make a sizeable donation to the Building Fund - as well as full fees, of course."
"Of course. How much is he donating?"
Dorothy had always admired Margaret's directness. "A thousand dollars."
"Gosh!"
"Which is... actually, Margaret, how much is that - roughly?"
"I believe the rate's about two and a half to the pound, so... four hundred pounds?"
Dorothy's eyes lit up for a moment before clouding over with doubt. "It's certainly very generous, but I hope it isn't a mark of how desperate he is. He assured me she's mostly an obedient girl, and apparently she's an A grade student, but... oh dear..."
"We'll find out soon enough, won't we? Don't worry, Dorothy. I've yet to meet a girl who didn't respond to clear boundaries and plenty of fresh air."
"Oh Margaret! You are a godsend. Thank you."
"What's her name?"
"Anderson... er..." Dorothy reached for her note-pad, "Francesca Anderson."
"And did the father give any indication what sort of wrong crowd it was?"
"No, he was deliberately vague about that. As a matter of fact, he deflected my attempts to probe. They can be very forceful, Americans, can't they?"
Margaret agreed with a chuckle.
"I did warn him that term starts this Sunday, and that he'd have precious little time to get everything on the list, but he assured me that wouldn't be a problem."
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