by DJ Black
Things could be difficult when four women had to share a house. And it was all the more difficult when it was Aunt Jane's house and she got to make all the rules.
Like so many women of her generation, Jane had never married. Amy sometimes conjured up a long lost love for her: a dashing captain who never returned from Flanders. Maybe there was such a man, but if Jane ever had such a past she kept it firmly to herself.
Jane was the last of the Edwardians, or so she styled herself. She'd even had a governess back in the day, or so she said. And in her day, girls knew their place.
Girls. There was the other thing. A woman was someone who came in to do the washing and cleaning. A lady, such as she, kept a house. All other female persons were definitely only girls. Even Amy's mother, Mary, who was almost 37.
Mary had brought Amy to live with her Aunt Jane in late 1946. The war was over and it was obvious even to Mary that her husband was never coming home. The house had gone in 1940 and since then Mary and Amy had shared an ever-changing set of temporary digs.
The other 'girl' in the house was Tommy. Tommy, whom Jane insisted on calling Thomasina, the name her parents had saddled her with, was another of Jane's nieces, Mary's first cousin. But at least Tommy was used to Aunt Jane's ways, having lived with her since 1936, when she was 16.
In the war, Tommy had served with the WRNS. The post war housing shortage had brought her back to Jane. She always said that the navy was not half as tough as living with Aunt Jane.
It was the first week of 1948 and 19-year-old Amy was learning that she was not too old for a spanking.
Amy had been brought up on spankings. With her father away and the world falling about their ears, mother had had no time for 'nonsense' as she called it. But things had eased off in that department until they came to Jane's. Thereafter life had taken on a distinct edge, and some days Amy could not even bear to look at a chair.
"Amy Louise Jones, you come with me this instant!" Her mother had set her jaw in that way that said she meant business.
"Ouch kid, your tail is toast," Tommy grimaced sympathetically as she slouched in the armchair. But despite her jocular manner, she unconsciously sat up straighter; no doubt Mary's scolding tone putting her in mind of Aunt Jane.
Amy sighed and walked with leaden steps to the kitchen where her mother was waiting. She hated the kitchen at times such as these. At least in the old days mother had taken her to her room.
"Mummy I..."
"Yes." Mary's tone brooked no stories.
"Nothing." Amy knew that anything she said would only make things worse.
"Get over my knee," Mother growled.
Amy was tipped over mother's lap as Mary sat on the kitchen chair, the skirts of her dress raised and her underwear exiled south in very short order. At least mother used her slipper; Great Aunt Jane had other techniques.
Amy could see her mother's feet, tipped as she was with her nose inches from the tiled kitchen floor. Her mother's thighs felt hard against her belly and she watched as her mother's hand reached down and pulled off her right leather-soled house shoe. Butterflies took flight from somewhere in her stomach.
There was the inevitable scolding, although Amy never listened as it was always the same. She just waited for the sting to replace the tickling chill on her upturned bottom.
When it came it always hurt worse than she remembered. The splat of the impact could be heard all over the house. But after a volley of swats beyond count in just the opening seconds of the spanking, Amy was more focused on the sting.
She gritted her teeth determined not to cry, although once during a spanking supervised by Aunt Jane, Jane had said, "A spanking cannot be said to have begun until a girl is contrite. And contrition means tears." That had been after the cider incident. Amy remembered that her mother had been in wholehearted agreement with Jane's maxim.
The spanking continued unrestrained, with Mary not relenting a jot in her pace or application. For Amy this meant that the sting quickly became a burn and a sob escaped her throat.
"Feeling it now my girl, you won't sit down for a week," Mary scolded.
It was Mary's favourite expression during a spanking. Amy would have laughed under other circumstances. The slipper never had such dire consequences. She would be tender for a day or two at most. If Jane was dishing it out then that was something else, but at present it was the here and now that mattered and Amy had had enough.
"Ooh please, mummy," Amy began to sob.
"Alright you silly girl, a little more and we are done."
Amy was thoroughly crying by the time her mother set her on her feet and she did a stiff-legged dance and gripped her thighs to prevent her hands straying to her bottom for a forbidden rub.
Mary waited for a moment and then pointed at the corner of the kitchen. Amy hated corner time; it was almost worse than the spanking. She begged silently with her sad eyes, but her mother was uncompromising, and in silent submission Amy walked slowly to the corner and hiked up the hem of her fallen skirts and slip.
She could expect to be there until suppertime at least, then she might be allowed to partake if she were lucky. At least it wasn't a day when Great Aunt Jane's charwoman came.
A little while later, Tommy wandered into the kitchen. Amy had long since stopped crying and was now standing with her hands clasped in the small of her back in the corner. She glanced sideways at Tommy, the blush on her cheek almost a rival for the vivid hue of her exposed bottom. Tommy shrugged; tough break kid, she thought.
Tommy had had it worse, both at Aunt Jane's hands and in the navy. At the training camp she had first served in, hardly a week had gone by when one of the girls hadn't been up before the CPO for a dozen licks of the stick. And she could lay it on hard. Tommy had been up before her twice.
Then there had been that time in Aden when she had dropped a loaded rifle and it had discharged; she shuddered, even Aunt Jane would have been impressed.
Mary looked up and saw that Amy had taken her nose off the wall; she began to tap the table impatiently until Amy turned her head back. Then she turned her attention to Tommy.
"Are you off out tonight?" Mary asked.
"Yes but it is hardly worth it. I mean to say I am 28 and I have to be in by 10. It really is too much."
Mary shrugged. Things were no different for her.
"Aunt Jane's rules."
It was almost 10.45 when Tommy reached the garden gate. It wasn't Jane's custom to wait up as Tommy was supposed to be on her honour to be back in time, but she may not have been long in bed. She touched an empty milk bottle in the dark and it toppled noisily onto the flagstones.
"Sugar." Swearing had long been spanked out of her.
She listened but there was nothing.
The key in the lock was loud enough, but it wouldn't budge. Then she realised that the door was bolted from the inside. This was both good and bad. Good because Aunt Jane would never have bolted the door if she knew Tommy was still out, but bad because getting in would now be a challenge.
She crept around to the back door and tried again. It was unlocked.
"Good old Mary," Tommy whispered to herself.
The door always jammed a little, so Tommy winced as she had to jar it open. This time she locked it firmly behind her and listened for any sound. Still nothing. Made it, she thought.
The stairs were a nightmare. Every other step creaked enough to wake the dead. It took Tommy an age to creep upstairs. She hadn't meant to be late, otherwise she would have secreted her nightgown downstairs to change into and then she could have pretended to have got up for a glass of water if caught.
The door to her room was ajar. Any wider and Jane might have noticed that she hadn't got home yet. I'll have to watch that, Tommy thought.
There was a sound behind her and the light caught her like a stalag searchlight.
"It would be easier if you put the light on," Aunt Jane said imperiously as she stood silhouetted in the door frame to her room.
"Aunt Jane I..."
"Goodnight Thomasina. We will talk about this tomorrow."
The next morning Tommy awoke with a sense of dread. CO blues they called it in the WRNS, an unrelenting nausea when up on a charge. She let out a great long breath and after washing and dressing, made her way down to breakfast.
"She caught you then?" Mary poured Tommy a cup of tea.
"Has she said something?" Tommy struggled to keep the panic down to a dull roar.
"No, but it is written all over your face."
"Oh. You don't think she will...?"
Mary pulled a face as if to say 'do you really want me to answer that.'
"Good morning Mary. Good morning Thomasina." Aunt Jane glided in, pausing only to examine a houseplant to ensure that it still met her exacting standards.
"Good morning Aunt Jane." Both women spoke in unison.
"Thomasina Nixon-Brown, I will see you in the withdrawing room directly after breakfast."
"Yes Aunt." Tommy tried to make it sound like a brisk response to her old commanding officer, but it came out of her mouth as if she were a sullen teenager.
Mary threw an old fashioned look at Tommy over the top of the teapot.
"I did my best," she whispered. "I told her you were in bed last night and when she locked the front door I left the back open."
"I know, thanks but... ooh bother." Tommy stamped her foot in frustration.
Breakfast was over far too quickly for Tommy and she didn't eat a thing. Then, taking a deep breath, she stood up and marched to the drawing room where Aunt Jane was waiting.
"You needn't close the door," Aunt Jane said as Tommy entered the room. "I want to set an example today."
Tommy swallowed. Not just because of what had been said, but because Aunt Jane was holding a cane.
"I know I deserve a spanking auntie, but I was only a little late." Tommy eyed the long thin stick with horror.
It was too much like the one she had encountered in Aden.
"I trust you are not going to be defiant, Thomasina."
"No aunty."
"Then please prepare for your correction."
"Yes aunty."
Tommy's hands went to the waistband of her skirt and she fumbled with the button for a few moments.
"Quickly girl," Jane snapped.
"Yes aunty."
Tommy made a fair impression of a quick-change artist as she shed first the skirt, then the slip and her not-so-brief briefs.
She never failed to feel a flush of embarrassment standing half-naked in front of anyone, and it was so much worse when you were about to be caned.
"Kneel on that and place your hands flat on the floor on the other side," Jane said as she kicked the pouf into the middle of the carpet. "I want your dainty derriere where I can chastise it."
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