Appropriate Appointments
By Mark Danelaw
Introduction to this story.
St Denise
Margaret Clements was experienced enough at 41 to walk the tight political line of the old guard and the varied and complicated demands of a new generation of parents. She strived to keep away from any outward distractions, such as her rather healthy rounded figure and impressively long and glorious auburn hair. Both these she hid under sensible clothing, hair worn up and heavy rimmed glasses. Nor did she ever reveal anything about her personal life. She was feared and respected by both her staff and students; the former because of her handling of the Board and the later because of her handling of a cane.
She sat at her desk to read and re-read the summary accounts. The books did not add up and the shortfall could not be explained. She thought about reading them all again but her eye fell on the grade reports, which she had yet to read and decided that this was an area more suited her time.
The junior grades were satisfactory enough, with only one problem girl who seemed to be caned for coming bottom of the class far too often. Her housemistress Miss Taunton was on top of this so far and the headmistress could see hope.
The rest of the school was another story. Grades were slipping on average and discipline might be a touch improved. There were vacancies in the science department and humanities, which was at the route of the problem. The latter looked hopeful though, a Miss Carmichael with qualifications in English, History and Geography looked most promising; briefly a naval officer no less, with five years’ experience as a teacher, three of those at a girls’ grammar and two at an inner city affair. Miss Clements hoped the naval career, however short, would guide the board to overlook her lowly state school background.
The proposed appointment for science however was somewhat challenging for her. Lucy Horton-Grange was the daughter of Lady Josephine Horton-Grange, a member of the board. She was being rather heavily foisted upon her. Her degree in Biology was a lower second and she had neither teaching qualifications nor experience.
Picking up the phone she summoned her PA, Bridget ‘Ducky’ Dale.
Ducky was there as if she teleported. Bridget Dale was a smiley young woman with uneventful ginger hair worn in a bun that emphasised her very freckled face, her tight blouse and tighter woollen skirt emphasised her figure and especially her rather full behind. She also had the habit of apologising for every perceived failure.
“Headmistress, sorry I was in the stationary cupboard,” she apologised.
Margaret, who had scarcely put the phone down, didn’t comment, “Ducky what do we know about Lady Josephine’s daughter Lucy?”
Ducky’s face fell and she considered a diplomatic reply, but this her headmistress after all. “You know she was at school here for a while?”
“No, no I didn’t?” Margaret reached for the file again and realised that it had been down-played on her application, “Interesting.”
“We were contemporaries, for a time, anyway… I did not like her,” Ducky blushed for saying it. “She was here a year already before I came, she had entered as a junior at 16, came straight from Donnington with mediocre grades. Her mother used her influence to get her in… but she thrived. Made monitor in her second year, skipped the scum pool altogether. Left at 18 and got into Royal Holloway, I think…”
“Yes, that is here,” Margaret frowned, “Why didn’t you like her?”
Ducky was blushing again and stood shuffling with one foot tucked behind the other as she always did in the headmistress’s office, “You know what I am like, and she was never very good with pond scum.”
“Ducky, I don’t like that term and I have warned you about…”
“Her words, not mine,” Ducky said hastily.
“So she was bit of a bully?” the headmistress said.
“A bully, perhaps yes… a stuck up supercilious superiority complex riddled bitch, definitely,” Ducky said with a rare assertiveness.
Margaret laughed.
“What else do you know?” Margaret indicated that Ducky should sit.
“She was a trial to her mother and the word is she has not exactly set the world alight. She has two sisters, Katherine… I think, she is younger and skipped university, worked as a nanny and then a fashion photographer, or something… the youngest sister… Amelia is still at Donnington doing A Levels…”
“Thank you, Ducky can you ask Mrs Denton to come and see me please?”
“Yes Miss,” Ducky said as she eagerly obeyed. Then she stopped at the door, “Miss, do you know why they call me Ducky?”
Margaret vaguely remembered but all these saints, as students were known, seem to have nicknames.
“Ducks float on the pond; just above the scum… it was about as far out of the pond as I was ever going to get until you came. You got me through school and into this job…”
“I am glad I did that… but you don’t have to…”
“I know I told you that last bit before, but I let people keep calling me Ducky so I don’t forget, and I want you to know that I don’t forget.”
“I see, thank you for sharing that. Now Ducky… please fetch Mrs Denton…” Margaret shooed her assistant away.
***
The call from Lady Avebury had dismissed any notion that Lucy Horton-Grange would not be hired. “She is one of us and all that,” she had been told.
“Well of course Josephine,” Margaret’s face was alight with a false smile that the Chair of the Board could not even see.
After the call Margret snatched up the summary accounts and furiously re-read them for any discrepancy at all that made any sense before tossing the files aside and picking up the phone for Ducky. She knew what she needed.
“Headmistress,” Ducky was there instantly as usual.
“Tell me have there been any riots in the school today?” she sat with the bridge of her nose pinched between finger and thumb.
“Riots, Miss?”
Margaret wafted her hand in irritation, “Or at least a malfeasant needing correction?”
“Oh,” Ducky relaxed and smiled knowingly; then she left for a moment. She returned with a medium cane, the black one with the straight handle. Extending it to the Headmistress she said rather ruefully, “You haven’t spanked me in quite a while.”
Margaret laughed and said, “Oh Ducky you are such a treasure, you don’t deserve the cane, not that I know of anyway; am I that transparent, whatever must you think of me?””
“Well you haven’t spanked me in a long time,” Ducky pouted, “It wouldn’t do me any harm and you would feel better. I really don’t mind working standing up for a couple of days, you know, if you really needed to…”
“Thank you Ducky, but please put the cane away,” she sat back and wondered if there was any ray of hope for the foreseeable future. “Oh Ducky, why don’t you come for drinks on Saturday night, say eight, you can… tell me anything that is on your mind.”
Ducky brightened immediately and said, “Oh yes Miss.”
***
Ducky almost skipped down the lane to the headmistress’s house. Flowers in one hand a bottle of wine in the other, she was wearing her best green cotton dress, and underwear for that matter. Margaret Clements was her absolute goddess, her saviour and mother figure rolled into one. A 19-year-old Bridget ‘Ducky’ Dale had been at the bottom of the scum pool when Margaret had taken over the school four years before. Her grades were a mess and her backside permanently sore from regularly coming bottom in more than one class.
Luckily for her Miss Clements had noticed that the housemistress’s beatings were having no effect and summoned her to her study. Instead of the cane or an interrogation, they had had tea and cakes while they chatted. Thereafter, and unbeknownst to Ducky, Margaret had put a moratorium on further grade thrashings for her. All that Ducky knew was that she was required to come to see Margaret each week with her homework so that they could go over it together before she had to hand it in. Any lateness to their little session resulted in an over the knee bare bottom spanking, any silly mistake in her work resulted in a spanking for the first slip and a jolly hard caning for any subsequent carelessness. But she had cared.
Ducky’s grades had improved with her confidence and within a year she was made monitor. Once a fully-fledged Saint Margaret had gently released her into the school to fend for herself, but Ducky never forgot.
Newly graduated she had applied and got the job as Margaret’s PA. This opened a whole new chapter of careless failure. However, rather than getting the sack, her headmistress painstakingly took her in hand and guided into her new position.
Ducky knocked on the door and waited.
Margret was a vision when she opened the door. Her dour professional outlook had been replaced by a cool smart woman with long auburn hair strikingly draped over her right shoulder. The blue dress clung in all the right places and brought out her eyes.
Ducky could scarce catch her breath.
“Come in Ducky,” Margaret ushered her in.
Ducky followed, her eyes resting on the Margret’s bottom. She knew wistfully and from afar that there could never be anything more, but that would ruin it for Ducky anyway. She was content to be her headmistress’… she blushed at a thought she could scarce name.
“What lovely flowers,” Margret smiled, “So good of you to come.”
“My pleasure Miss,” Ducky said shyly.
“You should call me Margaret,” Margret said.
“Oh no Miss,” Ducky was adamant, as she always was at these encounters. It was an old conversation.
“You have eaten?” Margaret asked.
“A little, but I don’t need anything, it is just drinks…?”
“Just drinks,” Margret smiled, “Sit down and tell me how are things.”
***
Margret used the time to find out more about Lucy Horton-Grange and things that were happening around the school. Ducky gushed with pleasure and information, feeling like a naughty sneak and loving it.
“I should be soundly thrashed for being so indiscreet,” Ducky blushed.
“The cane you mean?” the headmistress said as tried she to keep the amusement out of her voice.”
“Yes,” Ducky said meekly, “Dozens of strokes at least.”
“I don’t think you are as bad as all that,” Margaret told her, “A good spanking should set you right.”
“Yes Miss,” Ducky lisped.
“Take off that dress and go and face that wall,” Margaret told her, “I will be back in a minute.”
When Margaret returned with a tennis shoe and the hairbrush Ducky was stripped down to her bra, stockings and suspenders, chestly facing the wall. “Such a lovely vista,” Margret said.
“Thank you,” Ducky replied.
“I will sit on the sofa and you will go across my knee,” Margret told her, “A sustained spanking with the plimsoll should get to the bottom of things.”
“Please Miss, I have…” she blushed furiously.
“Tell me,” Margret used that sympathetic tone.
“Last time… you know, I bought that magazine… and I… you said it was natural but I was… too much… and I… bought another one and…”
“I see,” Margret patted her lap, “And you think you need to be punished?”
Ducky nodded.
“Let us deal with this spanking first,” Margret patted her lap again.
Ducky’s face melted as she snuggled across her favourite person’s lap until she was angled with her bare bottom jutting upwards.
“I am going to take my time and give you a nice long spanking, but save your tears, you are going to need them later,” Margret told her.
“Yes Miss,” Ducky was simmering now, in her head, in her heart and lower.
Margaret allowed herself to caress the fulsome pert behind, just to make sure… then with determination she swatted down hard with the plimsoll. The satisfying thwack echoed round the room and Margret heard a metallic echo come back from somewhere. She spanked the girl again.
Ducky gave out a small gasp and squirmed.
Margret studied the pink patch as it went rose and in tight groups amid the spanked flesh there were Goosebumps. Tight, she liked that, everything to do with Dicky was tight and she spanked her again, very, very hard.
Ducky gasped in earnest and drew a circle with her bottom in the air.
There were many like that, turning the bottom from tight white to fiery red. Then Margret indulged herself and the plimsoll blasted down hard and fast while Ducky yelped and squirmed.
Ducky was a blessing to spank. Her bottom was perfect and she could take any amount of punishment, but she was such a cry baby. She cried now, all while squirming and making small thrusting motions with her bottom. Margaret didn’t have to pause, she could spank until her arm got tired.
“Now young lady, are you learning your lesson,” the lesson of course was obscure.
“Yes,” a tearful Ducky agreed.
“Let’s make sure you are alright before I spank you with the hairbrush,” Margaret said.
Ducky knew what that meant, it was mortifying and her eyes were wild as she heard Margaret reach for the jar and that twist sound as it was opened. The petroleum smell was pungent, especially when her headmistress dipped the large thermometer into the Vaseline.
The thermometer was not the usual rectal tool. This one had a four centimetre bulb at the end and was twice as thick as a pencil. At her tight end she felt the stretch and her eyes went wide in sympathy. The yield was slow as the glass rod went deep and then deeper. Then her tightness closed on the hard column in her bottom and she stole a glance back. It was long too, projecting upwards now like a flag pole that might just as well held a white flag aloft.
“Relax, give it time for a reading,” Margaret said.
Ducky did, revelling in the tight intrusion that almost, but did not quite hurt. She all but purred.
Coming out the stretch was greater, and Ducky gritted her teeth.
“Your bottom feels very hot,” Margaret said as she let her fingers caress the strawberry flesh, “But according to the reading you are clinically dead.
Ducky giggled.
“Best of three,” Margaret said and gently but firmly reinserted the thermometer into its tight place.
***
The hairbrush had real bite and Ducky could not keep quiet now. Once Margaret reached the hard and fast stage there was no stopping the spanking. Ducky indulged her yelling and threw in some piteous begging for good measure; begging was good, especially when ignored, it made her feel more helpless and focussed her mind so that she could take more.
“You wicked girl, funding those porn merchants,” Margaret scolded.
“Yes Miss, sorry Miss,” Ducky wailed. Her bottom was blotchy and blistering now and she knew she would have bruises in the morning. The spanking sustained until she chuckled into out and out sobbing.
“Alright, you may go to the corner,” Margaret said with a final spank on the bottom.
There was no true corner, but Ducky knew where to stand to face the wall. Her buttocks ached under all that sting and she craved that feeling, it had been too long. She could even feel the path of the deep intrusion between her bottom cheeks. It was good to cry too, hands on head and she could just let go.
“Thank you Miss,” she said at last.
“You are most welcome,” Margaret said. “It has gone 10 now, perhaps…”
“Please let me stay… another hour at least,” Ducky begged.
“Another hour in the corner?” Margret tried not to laugh.
Ducky nodded, she would have preferred to kneel on the floor at Margret’s feet and sip wine and chat… but facing the wall was better than going home; much, much better. “You could always cane me, it would do me good.”
Margret smiled and shook her head. “I have told you before; the cane is for when you really need it, when you have failed yourself badly. Then I will cane you severely.”
“Yes Miss,” Ducky said ruefully. She hated the cane; she feared it and she craved it sometimes.
“Come and have a glass of wine,” the headmistress said.
Mark Danelaw
Part 3 Hadley Hall
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