CHAPTER 2

UNDER HER STEPMOTHER’S HAIRBRUSH

Her heart pounding as the reward for all this humiliating supplication beckoned Alice trudged back up the narrow grey stone stairway to the parlour following on the heels of her stepmother, all the while gazing, fixated, at the twinkling silver key that the woman dangled tantalisingly from her fingers as she led the way. Having reached the top and having crossed the red quarry-stone tiling to the silk rug set in front of the fireplace, Alice could only watch in cold-blooded horror as, rather than heading off to her father’s office and the safe, her stepmother instead slipped the all-important key back in her skirt pocket before brushing down her skirt and regally seating herself on one of the high backed wooden chairs that stood to the side of the chimney breast.

“Please... You don’t understand... I have to have my medication - now... Right now... Please...” The teenager’s voice trailed off as she watched her stepmother quietly reach across to retrieve the wood-backed hairbrush that she had earlier left on the side table. Her eyes widened in disbelief as the woman, locking her in her determined gaze, began to casually slap the flat back of the hairbrush against the palm of her hand before then patting her lap in a gesture that Alice somehow instantly recognised, despite it being something well outside her realm of experience.

“Yes Alice; I’m quite well aware that you need your medication - that is why you are going to do exactly as you’re told. Don’t worry, you’ll get the dose the doctor prescribed, but first we are going to have a little chat; I’m sorry, but it’s the only way I can get you to listen to me.”

“But... I, I need it now! NOW!”

Biting her lip she stamped her foot in frustration, immediately becoming angry with herself at the childish image she was portraying in that action and instantly reminded of that word embroidered on the housecoat her stepmother now had her in: ‘delinquent’.

“If you shout like that again you will get nothing. Now say you’re sorry... come on. I mean it; if you want your medication you will apologise immediately, young lady!” Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s voice was calm, steady but determined, the emphasis being placed on that last part, ‘young lady’. Her dark eyes glinted with intent in the firelight, fixing her stepdaughter with her stare and seemingly daring her to defiance.

Her limbs shaking like dried stems in the breeze, her stomach cramping and her nerves stretched like gut strings, beads of sweat breaking out all over her forehead, it took only a moment’s consideration for Alice to yet again swallow her pride: “Okay, okay. I’m sorry I shouted.”

“And you won’t do it again - will you?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“No... Say: I promise”

“Okay... I promise... But... I really do need it, now... I really, really do.” Alice couldn’t believe the pleading in her own voice now, the pathetic almost grovelling tone that was entering her speech. She hated herself for it - but she was beginning to hate her stepmother even more, for bringing her to this point. But then she wasn’t to know that this point was only the beginning as far as Karen Lamberton-Marchment was concerned, merely the jumping-off point for the long journey ahead she had mapped out for young Alice.

“And you will get it, too, if you’re good, as I said. But first of all, let’s get you out of that housecoat for the time being. Unbutton it, slip it off and leave it over the back of that armchair over there where you found it earlier - folding it neatly first... Come on hurry along; the quicker you do it the quicker you will get your medication... Good - now, come over here and lie across my lap.”

Up to that point Alice had been complying quite briskly, only too glad to rid herself of the embarrassingly dowdy and over-warm garment. Now standing there in front of her stepmother clad in that embarrassingly undersized tennis dress with its tiny flap of a skirt struggling to cover the old-fashioned acetate and Elastane knickers she had on, she could only stare aghast and open-mouthed in disbelief as the woman again tapped her lap meaningfully with her palm. The woman had to be joking - except that she could see that she very much wasn’t. She wanted to say no, so very, very much. She could feel her cheeks burning in embarrassment as the ever mounting effects of withdrawal eat away at her resolve, eroding her self-respect.

“Come along, just pop yourself over my lap and then it will all be over - we’ll have a little chat regarding what we can do about your education and getting you back on academic track and then I’ll pop up to the office and get your medication for you.”

Karen Lamberton-Marchment didn’t intend this, Alice’s first taste of corporal punishment, to be anything other than mild. It was supposed to be little more than symbolic, a little ritualistic affair designed to start off the process of creating the type of mindset in her stepdaughter she wanted the girl to have. At least that had been her intention.

With Alice lying prone across her lap in the traditional manner of old she quickly flipped up the little flap of fabric that constituted the tennis dress’s skirt, bringing down the hairbrush several times in fairly rapid succession across the seat of the girl’s knickers. Other than for the last strike, which she made a little harder - her intention being to leave a modicum of residual stinging across the girl’s behind to bring home the message that she had just been punished like a schoolchild across her stepmother’s lap - she employed barely enough force to bring much more than a little yelp from the girl’s lips. Then something seemed to overcome her: Instead of letting Alice up as she had intended, she settled down into a rhythm: Again and again, at well spaced measured intervals, she brought the hairbrush crashing down across her stepdaughter’s full pert bottom, rapidly reddening the girl’s soft flesh, each slap of wood on girl-flesh harder than that preceding it.

Poor Alice: Despite her determination to remain stoic and defiant to the end, having been caught by surprise by the sudden ramping-up of the severity of this onslaught she found herself instinctively twisting this way and that and doing and saying anything to get away from the blows raining down on her behind, but all to no avail. Her stepmother’s surprisingly strong arm held her firmly in position while she methodically covered every inch of her rounded bottom cheeks with well judged smacks of the hairbrush until Alice could take no more of the fiery torment - but still it continued.

Ordinarily Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s view was that such a punishment is never truly effective unless taken to the point that the offender is broken down, reduced to tears and left bawling her eyes out. But the purpose here was supposed to have been not one of correction per se but rather to impress upon the girl her authority to impose such a correction - if and when it became necessary - and to encourage Alice to begin to see corporal punishment as the routine part of her life she fully intended it would become. The sting in the tail on this occasion had been intended to be all psychological.

Now looking into the girl’s eyes, Alice having clambered to her feet, reading the defeat now residing there, Karen Lamberton-Marchment could see she had been more than successful. She had gone well beyond that point. This and certain similar procedures she had planned for the near future would suffice for now. It would be the scholastic side of the disciplinary regime she had planned for Alice that would break the girl. She herself would start the process but she accepted it would be Mrs Daphne Larkspear who would complete the task; that woman would, she felt sure, given a free rein break Alice entirely once she was passed into her hands.

If Alice was to be schooled at home then there could be no finer ‘home tutor’ in all of Christendom than her old ex-teacher; that much had been decided upon now. But there was still much to be arranged, not least of which was the provision of a suitable school room in which young Alice’s education might be continued and extended. And then there would have to be some sort of alternative sleeping arrangements made to replace the girl’s present bedroom - some amenity preferably kept apart from the running of the house per se, more closely linked to the schoolroom and more amenable to certain supervisory measures she was minded to put into place. She knew well Mrs Larkspear’s views on the matter: Mrs Larkspear favoured what she enthusiastically referred to as a philosophy of ‘total immersion’, by which she inferred that the setup should approximate as closely as possible the workings and atmosphere of a strict girl’s boarding school and that within that ‘world within a world’ the girl’s day was to be regimented down to the tiniest detail.

The later principle was to extend to Alice’s mode of dress, which was to be prescribed to the letter from the skin outwards taking into account of all activities and eventualities and was of course to be only that thought suitable for a girl undergoing strict scholastic discipline. Mrs Larkspear was adamant it had to be a genuine school uniform, though that description did not necessarily imply it needed to be ‘of the time’ nor that all the features needed to be taken from the uniform of any one particular school, since it would likely have to be bespoke to some degree in any case.

What was important - according to Daphne Larkspear - was that a girl’s school uniform, in such a situation where discipline was to be to the fore, should play down the girl’s personality and scope for individuality while encouraging the idea of conformity and submission to authority. A good school uniform should be, in her words, ‘repressive, restrictive, humbling and all-enveloping while smart and pleasing to the eye of the onlooker - by which she meant that it, the uniform - or rather the girl in it - should appeal to her particular and singular tastes. The finished article, as she understood it, might well end up constituting an amalgam of stylistic influences but Mrs Larkspear had a definite vision in mind and the problem well in hand and she was minded to leave that particular quandary to her.

Meanwhile the problem of locating a suitable site for the schoolroom persisted and was hers - Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s - and hers alone. But the house was extensive, sprawling and not short of seldom-used rooms, disused storehouses and locked and bolted cobwebbed attic quarters. It was the latter, once the province of the servants back in the era when such a household would have numbered many more staff than family members, which she determined she would explore first.