by DJ Black
The Honourable Lucy Beverage looked at the various pieces of paper laid out on the antique Queen Anne table. Each sheet scattered carelessly next to the envelope that had brought them to her door; each as careless as the choices she had made and had yet to make.
Her slender elegant fingers plucked unconsciously at her Gucci silk top as her clear brown eyes peered down her correctly proportioned elegant nose at the documents from beneath an immaculate chestnut fringe.
Lucy was tall for a woman, with an outer appearance of unruffled calm, but inside she felt sick and more lost than she had felt in all of her 32 years.
She was in hock for almost a million pounds and so far her attempts to pay off her debts by writing cheques she could not honour had led to a £10,000 fine and the prospect of 18 months in prison. She shuddered. The very thought of gaol time for her was as bad as the inevitable bankruptcy that would follow.
For a long moment, her life throbbed in and out of focus and an alien emotion flooded her soul. Somewhere in the back of her mind Edith Piaf was singing and Lucy shut her down with an ironic laugh. She suppressed a sob, feeling like a little girl who had scraped her knee and wanted to run to Daddy. But some bridges in life could not be rebuilt, she was in tune with Edith on that one.
The plane ticket her cousin had sent looked like an easy option, but then what? She would still be bankrupt with a prison term hanging over her. She wasn't sure what additional penalties there were for fleeing justice on a forged passport, but she suspected that it might be even more severe than her current fate.
That left her with one other option. She picked up the letter and reread it.
"The Cornwall Institute has considered your situation and is prepared to offer you a place at their alternative punishment centre."
There were very few details in writing, but at an earlier interview she had been told that the alternative on offer included corporal punishment. She had laughed in their face and flat walked out on them. However, one other fact now came back to her. As part of the 'treatment' as they had called it, all her debts would be paid with a low interest long-term loan and any amnesty would include not paying any fines.
"Sometimes money talks," she whispered.
Meanwhile in a seedier part of town, Patsy Kenwood could not believe her luck.
"The Cornwall Institute has considered your situation and is prepared to offer you a place at their alternative punishment centre," she read aloud, adding: "That's those spanking and caning freaks."
Some sort of religious nutters, she didn't wonder. But what the hell, it had to be better than three years inside, even if they did want her to attend some old-fashioned training centre and whack her bum a few times. All her rent would be paid and all her debts set aside with some sort of never-never scheme. It was a better deal than some of the creeps she had hung out with had ever offered her.
She had been in a state of shock for weeks at the prospect of returning to court to hear her sentence, now she risked a look in the mirror for the first time in days. Her greenish eyes sparkled under her untidy mane of red hair. At 29 she was a looker. Even at school everyone had said she could be a model, but then she just hadn't grown above average height. She thrust out her slightly too large breasts and smoothed the curve of her ample hips and shrugged. It hadn't stopped her being a dancer, she mused. Even if she did have to take her clothes off now and then. If only she had stuck to it instead of getting out of her depth with a bit of thieving on the side.
Oh well, she had always known something would turn up and it had.
"I am not going to prison," she sang childishly to herself in the glass as she began to dance. "I am not going to prison."
"You're damn well going," her aunt scolded.
It was almost the first thing she had said to Carol-Anne since she had been arrested for credit card fraud.
"But it's crazy," Carol-Anne whined.
"Crazy is it. How many times have you been caught shop-lifting and now you get caught for credit cards. Well I'll tell you girl, it's this institute place or prison. You decide and decide quickly," her aunt raged at her.
Carol-Anne had lived with her aunt for over nine years, ever since her parents had thrown her out at aged 16. She had never been the brightest of girls, in fact even her friends called her the original dumb blonde, but even she could see that the institute was worse than school and she had hated school.
"Oh auntie, please," she wailed, pleading with her big, sad, blue eyes.
Her aunt turned to confront her; although not particularly tall herself, she towered over the petite five feet nothing 25-year-old.
"You are going aren't you? You know you are," her aunt said firmly.
"Yes auntie," Carol-Anne sighed. After all, what real choice did she have?
Vernon Cornwall stood in his corner office above the converted stables and watched the three new girls step wide-eyed and nervous from the mini-bus with their bags. They could not see him from where they were and until they entered the courtyard, the Cornwall institute looked like any other English country estate.
It had taken years of investment and political manoeuvring to set-up the institute and even now he could not believe that the authorities had gone for it. It had taken careful campaign contributions and a great many favours; favours that included the quiet handling of not a few scandal-ridden wayward politicians' daughters. Finally, bit by bit, he had slowly got his modest establishment.
Now his latest batch of inmates had arrived liked flies unto the spider, he thought. First job is to scare them a little and then see what they are made of.
Over the last two or three years, many young women had opted to leave the institute before he could make much headway, but there was always a few that settled in; some, even staying long after their sentences were up. Looking at the three newcomers, he wondered which of them would make the grade and which would fall at the first hurdle.
"This will require careful handling," he mused aloud.
The three women had hardly spoken to each other on the long drive from London. Only Patsy had made any real attempt, but her heart wasn't really in it. She quickly decided that the smartly dressed older woman with dark-bobbed hair was too snooty to talk to the likes of her and the small five foot blonde was just a scared kid.
Now that they had arrived there was even less reason to talk. So it was in silence that the three made their way with their bags up the gravel drive to the open gate that lead to the enclosed stable complex.
The gate itself was a two-storey brick archway that had one row of windows above it before the roof. There were no ground floor windows on the outer wall and those in the upper stories stared blankly back at them, impenetrable to their gaze.
"It looks like a bloody prison," Patsy said.
Carol-Anne looked up terrified by this remark although Lucy just sneered.
Getting no reply, Patsy added, "No actual gates anyway."
"An open prison then," Lucy murmured.
"Come on," Patsy said brightly, as she hitched up her bags to get a better grip and strode on through the arch.
Reluctantly, the others followed her into the shadow of the brick tunnel into the courtyard, with nothing but a bright glare beyond.
Then they saw a silhouette of a girl sweeping.
"You there," Lucy said imperiously. "Where do we report?"
They could see now that the girl had a Mediterranean look and without pausing with the broom she nodded somewhat surlily to somewhere beyond.
It was then that Lucy noticed that the girl's grey working dress was somewhat short, leaving her legs bare to just below the waist. Then as they went past, she could see why. To all intents and purposes the girl was wearing only a tunic that hung to the top of her thighs. Only, as if this was not enough, it had been turned up behind to reveal the girl's bare bottom. More shockingly, her firm dusky behind was scored with sharp welts that lined her long buttocks from the tucked-up hem to the top of her thighs.
Lucy smothered a gasp and hastily looked away. That small gesture was enough for the others to look where the older woman was so pointedly not.
Carol-Anne blanched and clapped a hand to her mouth while Patsy giggled and exclaimed, "Bloody hell, they weren't kidding, were they?"
In truth, Patsy found the sight of a well-caned bare bottom quite exciting and she tried to catch the other two's eyes to share the fun. But Carol-Anne kept her chin tightly clamped to her chest and gazed at the floor while Lucy hurried on.
In the yard beyond worse was to come.
In similar attire and bent over a trestle in the middle of the courtyard, was another girl. Her legs were secured apart so that all was revealed behind as her bare bottom curved upwards to the sky.
Behind her, stood a very large blond-haired man in his middle 30's dressed in leather trousers and a tight white T-shirt. Between his hands he flexed a long pliable cane, which was about as thick as his thumb and a meter long. In any other circumstance the whole bond-movie villain look might have made the girls laugh, but one look from his hard blue eyes and all three virtually gulped in unison.
"You are late," he bellowed at them like a parade ground sergeant.
"B-but..." Carol-Anne stuttered.
"We didn't exactly have any control over the travel arrangements." Lucy managed to sound cool, even faced with the woman's stark bare bottom.
Patsy had met many men in her life and knew when to keep her mouth shut.
"Are you answering me back?" the man rasped.
"No I simply..." Lucy tried again.
"Right, you three, get your knickers down and form an orderly queue. You're next." The order was punctuated by a slice of the cane through the air and the woman on the trestle flinched.
"Oh my God," Carol-Anne gasped.
"Oh man, come on," Patsy groaned, but she put down her bags in preparation to obey nonetheless.
Lucy swallowed and licked her lips. This was insane. It was too soon, she hadn't finished denying to herself that this was part of the deal yet. She felt sick, as if a great void in her life had opened.
"Please Sir, we're sorry," Carol-Anne said and looked as if she might flee.
Just then a door opened behind them and another man in a suit entered the yard. He was around 40 and well-built, although nowhere near as tall as the man with the cane.
"Alright Karl, leave this with me," the man said with authority. "You three, pick up those bags and follow me."
Patsy's face broke into a grin and when his attention was elsewhere, she risked poking her tongue out at Karl.
Carol-Anne didn't need telling twice and gathered up her bags and scurried towards the door that the suited man was holding open for them.
Only Lucy paused for another look at the scene. She felt strangely light-headed and for a moment the reprieve seemed an intrusion as she tingled in unfamiliar places. Then seeing the suited man glaring at her, she shook herself and hurried after the others.
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