“OH!” I squeak. “You mean…?”
“I will need you cut me about…eight…branches. Six young striplings and a couple of more robust examples to give the bundle a little backbone. Well, what are you waiting for?”
He indicates the birch trees in front of us. Oh God. He is actually going to birch me. My cheeks are tingling in the late March, early evening chill as much from humiliation as from cold as I set to work sawing off the young green rods and imagining them applied to my backside later on. Sinclair supervises, vetoing specimens that seem too weedy, until finally I have a bunch of eight. He tests each individually, swishing it through the air to assess its level of stinginess, even bending me over and whacking my rear end with a couple, making me thank God for corduroy. At least it is late enough in the day that passers-by are unlikely, though not impossible. When he is satisfied that my labours have borne fruit, he makes me carry the bundle home. It is, to say the least, an uncomfortable walk back. I wonder if the people we encounter in the street think anything of my peculiar burden – is it an obvious conclusion that they are bound for my bum, or will it be assumed they are for decorative or craft purposes? I hope the latter, though I imagine my shifty, tormented expression might tend a knowing observer towards the former.
Back at the flat, he sits me down at the table and instructs me to trim the rods of any rough edges.
“I don’t want to draw blood,” he says, reassuringly. Is that reassuring? I’m not sure. Then he hands me some twine, which is to be wrapped securely around the ends of the bundle to a length of about six inches, forming a handle. A ribbon – how sweet – is tied around the spot where the twine ends and the whippy rods flare out. The weapon is ready. It looks meaner than Cruella de Vil with PMT.
“Good work, Miss Newland,” says Sinclair, picking it up and caressing the strands lovingly; a good workman who does not want anything to blame his tools for. “This will certainly get my point across effectively, I trust.” Gulp. “Now I must ask you to remove your lower garments and bend over your chair, if you please, keeping a tight hold of the sides.”
The formality and dispassion of his tone is frightening and yet, at the same time, rather a turn on. Sinclair is horribly strict, but that is a big part of what makes him so sexy. I cannot deny that, as I drift into sleep each night, I hear his voice in my head telling me to place myself over his knee…lower my knickers…slap!...need to be taught a lesson, Miss Newland…slap!...and then he would touch me…ooooh yes, he would touch me there….and I fall asleep satisfied, and yet so very unsatisfied, so full of longing and need. Oh Sinclair.
But there is no time for fantasy now – this is real, and it is going to be real pain I feel. Once I have unwillingly uncovered myself from the waist down, I droop forwards over the chair seat and grip the sides, as instructed. My arse thrust up and out while my spine slopes down, I am hideously aware that my masterful mentor can have a good long look at my womanly parts from this position. I hear him walking around behind me, shaking out the bundle of birch twigs in a manner that makes my heart stop, continuing this process for what seems like a very long time.
“Now then,” he says in a low, authoritative voice, once he has tired of the psychological terror tactics. “You will receive ten strokes of the birch, each one of which you will count for me. Should you move out of place or attempt to protect the target area, please be in no doubt that additional strokes will be added to the total until your behaviour indicates obedience and suitable contrition. Have I made myself clear, Miss Newland?”
“Yes, sir,” I say fearfully, my backside twitching.
“Then I shall begin.” He lays the birch rods against my behind; I feel their harsh texture and coldness and I cringe. When he removes them, I tighten my grip on the chair and my jaw clenches. They fall through the air with a swoosh and a slight rattle and then land on my bottom like a swarm of angry bees, stinging me in long lines across the startled flesh so that I gasp and utter a weak cry, only just preventing myself from jumping up. This is serious punishment. “One, Sir,” I say unevenly, but now he is raising his arm again and I don’t think I can… oooh, noooo. Another stinging slash of pain overtakes my every nerve ending; I sway dangerously, almost bringing the chair over and bite down on the cushioned seat. “Two, Sir,” I say, and my broken voice betrays my fear that I will not be able to take eight more of these without trying to elude the lash.
Indeed, after the fourth stroke I have to admit defeat; I leap up and clutch at my raging bum with a forlorn appeal to my disciplinarian to please let me take any other punishment, anything but more of this… His face dashes my hopes and he gently admonishes me that he must add another stroke to the total to make it eleven. Twelve unless I resume my position immediately.
With a deep sigh, I bend back over the chair, tears in my eyes and dread in my soul. “Four, Sir,” I whisper.
The rods fall another seven times, each occasioning wild rocking of the chair and much under-the-breath moaning and oohing and aahing while the tears stream. Suddenly I understand the full implications of ‘unapologetic sadist’. He gets off on this. Perhaps he will be thinking about this later, alone in his bed… In fact, he most definitely will. Somehow, the idea that my pain is fuelling his sexual release makes the last few swingeing strokes bearable. I swim into the fierce burn, imagining the look of glazed lust in his eyes, and I maintain position as obediently as I can until I count the final “Eleven, Sir,” and let out a shuddering half-sob of breath.
“Well, then, Miss Newland,” he says, and I detect just the faintest tremor of uncontrolled vibration in his voice, “I trust we can conclude that there will be no repeat of Friday’s disgraceful behaviour?”
“Yes, Sir,” I whisper huskily, wiggling my searing hot bottom with just a trace of seductive intent, despite the horrible pain that lingers in the mistreated globes. Touch me, touch me, touch me.
He draws a sharp breath and takes a step back. “You will fetch one of the hard kitchen chairs and sit at the table to write me a thousand word essay on the importance of respect in a functional society.”
“Oh!” I stand up, running a tentative hand across my tender posterior. “But I’ve two other essays to finish before next Friday. And what about our lesson?”
“It will have to be postponed until tomorrow, I’m afraid. Go on, then.” He shakes the birch rod at me, precipitating my flight into the kitchen for the aforementioned wooden chair.
A highly unpleasurable two hours is spent shifting wincingly on the unforgiving seat while I scribble out a load of old flannel about god knows what. Sinclair retires to his office and leaves me to it, checking up on me every half hour to make sure I’m not slacking. I can’t work out whether I want to kiss him or punch him in the face. A bit of a blend of both, I suppose.
Once I have finished the essay, he reads it slowly and deliberately, pacing up and down in front of the table while I watch his facial twitches disconsolately.
“Very well, you may go to your room now,” he says tonelessly.
“But…it’s only nine o’clock!” I protest.
“Now,” he says firmly.
I traipse off and the first thing I do is check my rear in the mirror. It is an intricate palimpsest of long red slices, interweaving and meshing across the twin spheres of flesh, with occasional beads of blood blister. I trace it with fascinated fingers, feeling as if I am reading a braille document. Sinclair really went to work on me.
I throw myself stomach first on the bed and wonder what it would take to get him to kiss me. Would he like to? Would he like to take these disciplinary scenes a little further? I imagine him doing so…how it would feel…his strong arms around me, his hands rubbing soothing cream on to my sore skin, his lips on my face, my neck, lower, lower, oooh. My hand has strayed underneath my stomach and has seamlessly slipped down to the throb between my legs. Two fingertips circle and press at the soft nub of flesh down there while I picture him kneeling behind me, opening me, stretching and filling me, harder and faster, backwards and forwards, pushing me purposefully towards the edge and then, with a hard pound and a low vibrating whisper in my ear that tells me I am his, he tips me over into freefall….oh yes…God, yes…Sinclair…Sinclair…Ooooooh.
Flushed and sticky, I sail into sleep hoping that dreams of my lustworthy landlord will meet me there.
*
Somehow the birching has driven me over the margins of decency into florid Sinclair-madness. I slink into the kitchen at breakfast wearing shortie pyjamas and nothing else, subtly made-up with hair artfully mussed. He barely registers. I try to initiate conversations that will break the barriers of our relationship and carry us further on a tide of intimacy. He cuts them short, starts talking about Robespierre or whatever. I scoot slyly closer and closer on the sofa during our scholarly sessions. He stands and expresses a need for a glass of water. Bah! I am thwarted at every turn.
On Thursday night, the penultimate night of term, I make a bold approach over dinner.