Chapter 10
A sense of green under over-arching beeches, peaceful, like lying in a still pool, grateful and contented.
The two women, each lovely in her own way, lay back against the bole of the tree. Their horses grazed nearby. Joanna was in riding breeches, and boots, while Cynthia wore her usual bleached settler's shirt and chino slacks.
"So that's that." Joanna tore the letter in two, slowly and self-sufficiently. "It's over. Done with."
"And you're glad, darling, aren't you?"
She nodded. "Tom never meant much to me. Not to my deepest self, the substance of my being. He would never have learnt to understand...."
"The shadows?" Cynthia supplied.
Joanna smiled. "If I'd ever told him, he'd have thought me kinky, queer, or a pervert."
"Oh that."
"All the usual miseries."
They stayed in silence for a while. Then Joanna said, "Why do I feel so wonderful here, so right? It's like being unclosed, open."
"Beautiful and pure and clean. I know." Cynthia nodded her flaxen head over a blade of grass. "The Territory is a perfect abstraction-at least I think so. Soulless. Breathless. A singleness of force and quality. It's ... utterly romantic."
"It's all I've ever dreamed of," Joanna said, "and to think I've only been here these few weeks. It's uncanny. You were dead right, Cynth. There is a special intensity of existence here."
"That moment of honey. There was such a nice one last time poor Pammie was birched, wasn't there?"
"But not only that." She rose to her feet, recipient, relaxed, as if the blood beating through her veins could be felt in the leaves above. "It's," she got out suddenly, "like the house of my soul, full of subtleties, and sweet corners," yes and, she added with a grin, "shadows."
Cynthia got up, too. She looked solemnly into her sister's tranquil eyes.
"You've made the first step, Jo, and I'm glad. But I really wonder if you'll want to stay, and immigrate, and go through it. The special Gladiator Camp is tough."
Joanna's chin came up. "I'm game."
But Cynthia shook her head. "You've only touched on justice yet. You wait till you've had your first Guarder, or a real Gladiator beating. And been degraded and soiled, and ... ugh!"
"I've seen what goes on in your Punishment Shed," retorted Joanna warmly. She had; on the beaten earth sat a trestle like a saw-horse, one end lower than the other. The desperate victims, one after another, strapped across it, legs parted, while the grinning Mr. Johns, his ebony torso sweating, had hewn into their stretched and meaty backsides six, eight, once nine times with a fiendish "Penal" cane-long, leathery, elastic. ("Useful for training polo ponies with, too," Cynthia had commented.) The several culprits groaning and stiff-legged, holding their buttocks. The coloreds managed their own discipline effectively. At least three of those Joanna had seen had been young wives "sent up" by their husbands for laziness. They left the shed with weals as thick as fingers and a dread of the stick in their souls. "I think I know," she added proudly.
"You haven't had a Guarder," said Cynthia ominously.
Joanna strolled over to her horse with the fragments of the torn letter from her lawyer in one hand. It announced the finality of her divorce and, after an inspective sniff or two, the mare ate it eagerly. She cantered back in silence to the stables, and in the house poured herself a foaming glass of beer. She felt hot and heavy now, the material of her breeches close on the egg-like globes of her rump.
Looking at the local paper, she was aware of Cynthia phoning. Pamela had come in from the pool, her costume wet and fucked behind.
"Have a good ride, Auntie Jo?" she inquired, rubbing one ear with a towel.
"Yes, thanks," Joanna murmured through the beer.
Pam looked none the worse for her straightener, of which all marks had disappeared, and she had not, in fact, been punished corporally, to Joanna's knowledge, for some time. She had had to wear a backboard for an afternoon, for slouching, but that was all.
Suddenly she was aware that the teener was listening. There was a strange, sly concupiscence in her gaze, and Joanna came slowly erect.
"Yes, Alec, okay," she heard, "I'll put it to her ... but can't I have eight?. . .I mean, it isn't the same as you ... all right, I'll tell her...."
A second later Cynthia returned. She was pensively unbuttoning her shirt. Pamela was as alert as a rapier on guard.
"Jo, that was Alec. Evidently you forgot to leave that duplicate key in the car. His glove compartment is locked and he's swearing like a trooper."
"Oh damn, I did," said Joanna as casually as she could.
Cynthia waited. Then she said, "He really was most annoyed. He plans to give you ten when he comes back tonight."
"Ten!"
"Or you can take six from me now. With the switch."
Joanna said nothing. She took a deep gulp of icy beer. Then, "Which switch?" she asked.
"You know perfectly well. My riding switch."
Cynthia's tone had altered. She was staring at her sister in a hostile way. Joanna responded to it. She felt big and sullen, yet trembling in every fiber.
"All right," she said. "There's not much alternative, is there?"
Cynthia took off her shirt, exposing her now healed and heavy breasts. She poured herself a glass of brimming beer.
"Come on, get it over with, " Joanna said.
"A little suspense never did a sinner any harm," came the answer. "Remember. And now turn and tell Pamela what's going to happen to von "
"That's not necessary," she snapped.
"I have the power to give you extra strokes," said Cynthia, smiling and testing the bulging biceps of her tan right arm, "up to twelve. Now go ahead."
Joanna shuddered.
"Look her in the face."
Pamela's eyes were shell-like in their pure blue, but it was an aggressive gaze also. Joanna knew the girl was enjoying this immensely. She resolved to give them no satisfaction at all.
"For a forgetful Omission I am going to get six strokes of the switch across my ... naked buttocks."
"Fat, bare butt." the child snapped.
"Fat, bare butt," said Joanna, after a moment.
"Satisfied, Pam?" said her mother.
"I'd really like to hear her punish herself verbally a bit more, Mummie."
"Again, Joanna."
She sighed. "For being a silly idiot my worthless person is going to be bent over, its stupid fat butt cheeks bared and spread apart and then whipped six times as hard as possible with a riding switch, until, until," she stumbled, flushing deeply, "until I wish I hadn't been born a woman."
"Much better, dear. First I'm going to change into a pair of sneaks, but I'll be with you directly. Pam, you can take your aunt into the den, bend her over the desk, and get her ready."
"Cynthia!" Joanna exclaimed, crimson. "You're not going to...."
"Strip her butt."
"Please. That isn't necessary."
"For your soul it is, darling, for your soul it positively is."
Before she knew it, Joanna was following the neat navy tunic and seriously bowed head of her niece into Alec Reddick's study. Her legs moved of their own.
"Stand there," came her piping tone. Once more Joanna stood at the end of the gleaming desk, which the girl now dutifully divested of its objects. Then she came behind her aunt and started unbuttoning the breeches.
"I can do that," Joanna said swiftly.
"Please take your hands away, Auntie," came the reply. For some reason Joanna did. A moment later her cord breeches were hanging in sloppy, awkward folds at the top of her boots. A moment after that they had been joined by her panties. Only a small tail of sweaty shirt, stuck between her buttocks, remained.
"Now bend forward with your arms in front of you," came the childish voice, sternly. With a contemptuous twitch the tail of the shirt was tucked up Joanna's back. "Now stick out your bottom, tight." Despite herself Joanna made a move. "Arch it up, Auntie," she was told. "Turn your toes in, to spread your flabby cheeks. Push out your ass. Go on, Auntie Jo, just as if ... you wanted to ... go." Joanna was in trembling tears. The voice went on. Pamela was exciting herself; there was the rustle of girlish garments, then, tensely, "Press your thighs together, Auntie Jo, your cunny is showing." I
Joanna stood up. "Listen, Pamela, you were told to position me, not to torment me. I co-operated with what you said, but the time hasn't come for you to punish me, yet. And the next time I cane you, my girl, I'm going to take the skin off your seat. Slowly."
"What's this? Angry words?"
Cynthia appeared, her breasts swinging, carrying her worn hide quirt in one hand.
"She wouldn't stick it up properly," said the girl in a sulky tone.
"Then let's give her a couple extra, shall we?" Cynthia said brightly.
"That's unfair," said Joanna, feeling tears in her eyes again.
"And one makes three. Bend over, stretch out your hands and Pamela will hold them."
"Please, Mumsie. Can't I see ... from behind?
"No. Hold her over hard, dear."
Small hot hands held her hands. Joanna could feel their intense, burning excitement. She pressed her thighs together, trying to minimize her vulva. Then she sank her head between her arms. She would not let it show, she would not let it....
"Aaah!"
A flame of lightning burned her flesh. Her hands leapt like fishes in her niece's. The beating proceeded slowly, methodically and-Joanna knewas hard as possible. After the first gasp she controlled herself stoically. Just a hot oil burn, no more than a hot oil burn-wasn't that what she'd always said to herself in the-oow!-Women's Republican Club in ...
"Hou!"
"Getting to you now?"
"You might at least," she gasped out, half erect after the appalling sting of the sixth stroke, "hit me on the bottom. That last was on my legs."
"Right in the fold, dear, right in the fold."
"Hit me higher and I'll take it. Please."
"Come on, get over." A yank on Joanna's hands.
"And you'd better tuck in your cunt for these three because they're going to be hard. They're for not playing the game. When you're under correction, you never question ... anyone ... understand!"
The rushing air was completed by a meaty thump.
Suddenly Joanna knew the pain was too much. She was not going to be able to take it without a cry. The agony caught her sickeningly and her face was now staring straight into Pamela's. The girl's eyes were fixed on hers, her face flushed and taut, isolated from her. It was as if it had no soul at all. It was-pure of being. So must her own have been, watching Pamela birched that Saturday at noon, absolute and utter, as if some other self had asserted itself within.
Whhhruppl
"Aieee!" A strange, violent squeal escaped her and then a squall of shaming tears. The last cut belted into limp buttocks, beaten in every sense. As she stood up, speechlessly clasping her behind, she saw a flash of white, even teeth; the childish hands that had left her own gave a sudden, happy clap.
"Say thank you for your punishment nicely," counseled Cynthia calmly.
Her body burnt like fire. She turned and said her words, then clutched clumsily at clothes to cover her beaten flesh.
It was an hour before she recovered. She lay on her bed in an agony of inflamed bliss. At last she put on her tightest fitting tennis clothes, her socks and sneaks, and went downstairs to the living room. Only Pamela was there.
There was a moment's suspense. Then Joanna walked firmly over to the sofa and with merry eyes bent down and kissed the pure round forehead, just where it met the sleek blonde hair. The girl turned an open, glowing face.
"Feel like a spot of tennis, Pammie?"
"Do I!" She leapt up at once.
Joanna stood there, smiling. She was aware that her whole body had filled out recently and was defined, firm and superb in the tight white tunic, her buttocks darkly wealed, all flushed and hot.
"I always play better for a few belts across the backside," she said.
"Oh Auntie Jo!" Pamela grabbed her and hugged her.
"I'm sorry I said what I said."
"What?" There was a girlish frown. "About wanting to take the skin off my seat?" She shook her head, as if not understanding. "Oh no, Auntie, that was wonderful, and I hope you will. What you said then ... well, it helped me on ... during, I mean."
"And you making me chastise myself verbally was just right too, Pam. Thank you for it."
She pecked again at the forehead, and the girl darted off to change.
"Bet I get two games a set today, Auntie," she called on her way up the stairs, two at a time.
The days passed calmly after that. Fused, inseparable. They swam, they even rowed in a lake belonging to the Benson's ("He should have moored his house in it," Cynthia remarked). Joanna's skin felt new, her life enriched.
She was not chastised again. She stretched her limbs in the sun, feeling a new freedom, now that the divorce was final. Occasional letters came through, but very late and she soon lost all desire to even open them. Out there (as they called it) was another world. Only they knew.
But in her heart she knew, too. She knew that she had to be whipped, and whipped again. It would come, like a chaos, an exultation of thunder, relentless and demanding. She both feared it and did not fear it. It had to happen, that was all. The God of The Territory was the lion, not the lamb. And each week now, each few days, some odd chord would be struck at this expectant darkness inside her, where she knew the lion of her life was lurking, ready.
It might be seeing some woman of great dignity and self-possession at a party, eloquently plumping down a cushion before gingerly lowering herself to a seat; seeing a maid going more mournfully than usual about her duties, one hand gently rubbing her behind; catching sight, at the pool, of one of Pamela's friends behind, blue weals painted either side of her brief bikini bottom. In the trembling, sacrificial heat of the afternoon's siesta period the silence would be broken by thin, lisping snips, regular, even religious in their rhetoric. Joanna would count them as she lay on her bed, knowing that back in the servants' court Bella was beating a maid for some peccadillo. These sounds were so many symbols ... four, five, six ... a hidden metonymy of her soul.
Once she was playing bridge in the open club room at the Tennis Club; there had been stirrings overhead; a committee meeting or something, she was told.
"I believe they're going to seed Peg," remarked her partner. "Two clubs."
Joanna had observed Sally Benson, the Treasurer, go up, but didn't get the message. She inquired. It seemed that scores were settled once a month-and by scores were meant scores. Delinquencies of dues, any discourtesies. It seemed that Peggy Walker had twice booked a court and forgotten to cancel. All hands paused on the green baize as the slender brunette, in abbreviated tennis attire, was led through the room by the Club Secretary. She went up the wooden stairs, and someone said, "I suggest we pass, for a moment."
There was dead silence, then the boards creaked overhead and deep on the drum of her ear Joanna heard ... it.
"Two," said her partner dreamily, "three, four, five, and one makes set."
There was another silence, a commotion on the stairs and Peg Walker came into view, her face flushed and twisted, rubbing her diminutive posterior.
"Bad luck, Peg," said one.
"Christ! That woman can hit!"
She walked rapidly away in the direction of the changing-rooms with her panties in one hand, rubbing lustily at a bare, striped, jouncy can.
Once, delivering something from Alec to Simon Smith-Peters in town, Joanna had been asked to wait a moment. The moment was stretched and at the end of it a pert secretary emerged, a folder in one hand, but the other at her rear. By such tokens did she know. Yet she was unready for the worst, when it happened.