Miss Mabel

Miss Mabel: chapter 2. Sunday at Home

After I had dealt with Miss Mabel and Miss Emily, our relationship was subtly changed, and more observant people, less wrapped up in themselves than Mrs Bissell and Miss Harriet, would have noticed it and commented. Whilst Miss Mabel was, if anything, friendlier and rather playful, Miss Emily was rather timid and ill at ease, seeming distinctly frightened of me.

Then came Sunday. The rule of the household was that all, family, and the servants, excepting the cook Mrs Ross, went to Sunday morning service at Kingsway Wesleyan Methodist Church, where the late Mr. Bissell had been a trustee, and held a family pew.

I was exempt from this rule for the simple reason that my family were committed Unitarians, for whom a trinitarian service was little short of idolatry. Coming from the East Midlands, where Unitarianism is strong, I was surprised to find that in London it was very much a minority creed, and that the nearest congregation to me was at Islington, almost an hour's journey away.

So on Sunday mornings, I was allowed the indulgence of staying in an empty house with the Sunday newspaper. In the evening I would often walk over to Islington for the 6 pm service, but this was a preference, not a rule.

That morning, shortly after breakfast Miss Mabel ran into the front parlour where I was reading my

Weekly Dispatch

, and snatched the paper out of may hand and threw it across the room, saying petulantly:

"Why do you read that silly old paper instead of talking to me?"

"Miss Mabel", I said sternly, "you are in trouble again, and I am going to have to punish you."

"Oh Mr Cowell, I am so sorry", she retreated, "Please forgive me; don't punish me again."

"Too late", I replied, seeming to fall into a pre-ordained script, "Can you miss Church this morning, and come to my room?"

"Oh, well, if you are going to be so stern and horrid, I suppose so."

I resumed the paper, and waited events.

At a quarter to ten, the family set out on the short walk to Church, and I was left alone in the house, but for the cook, Mrs Ross two floors below. Almost immediately the door opened and Miss Mabel crept in, hanging her head, but full of suppressed excitement.

" I told them I had a pain in the back, and couldn't sit on a hard pew for two hours."

"Good thinking," I said, half to myself, "that will explain why you are a bit stiff and sore later."

Miss Mabel grinned at me no fear, no guilt or apprehension evident in her manner.

"Get ready and come to my room in ten minutes," I said, "and bring a pot of cold cream for your poor back."

The door opened ten minutes later, and there she was, in her grey, wide-skirted, watered silk Sunday frock, but without the pretty matching merino jacket with tight sleeves and piping of black bugle beads, that made her look so stylish for the Kingsway congregation on Sunday mornings.

She put a small pot of cold cream down on the bamboo bedside table, and stood in front of me, her face downcast, but looking up at me through her lashes. I felt a thrill of such excitement that I could barely keep my face solemn.

"Well, Miss Mabel, it seems that you have not learned your lesson, so I am afraid we must try again to teach you good behaviour. This time you will go over my knee for a good spanking".

"Oh Mr. Cowell, please, please forgive me, I swear I shall be a good girl", she replied, her face full of innocent entreaty.

"No, it must be so. Raise your skirts and lie over my knee". I said sternly.

At this time, the crinoline was de rigeur for any fashionably-dressed young lady. Normally the crinoline skirts kept their shape by means of a thick, heavy bell-shaped horsehair petticoat, itchy and uncomfortable in wear. The tendency of the crinoline to rise up and reveal an embarrassing amount of lower limb had led to the wearing of under-drawers, (not so long ago the exclusive province of women of easy virtue), and straight petticoats that clung to the legs, minimising embarrassing revelations.

As Miss Mabel raised her skirts I saw at once that she had removed all but one flounced petticoat from under her dress, and that her legs, clad in dark grey stockings with white clocks, and gartered at the knee, were innocent of the pretty frilled pantalettes, which, since I first saw them on the clothes-line, had featured in dreams and daydreams alike.

The over-the knee position was so intimate, her slight weight pressed on my groin, the creamy globes of her buttocks raised invitingly, her head hung low, hands gripping the rungs of my chair. Somehow I felt closer to a woman than I had ever felt; closer than in the much greater intimacies I had exchanged with my sweetheart and a few other girls at home. I resisted the temptation – so strong – to stroke her bottom lovingly, for that would be to ruin the moment, and perhaps destroy this budding relationship forever.

Raising my hand high, I slapped down hard. Mabel, once again made that little moan, barely louder than a whisper, and a crimson blotch spread across one cheek of her bottom Again my hand fell hard, again the little moan escaped her, and the other cheek bore a matching blotch. Slowly, this pattern was repeated, until, after a dozen slaps as hard as I could contrive, my hand ached and stung, and her lovely bottom was a bright crimson. I stopped.

"Off you get", I said quietly.

Mabel stood upright, facing me, her skirts still held waist high, revealing her rounded belly from the little flat whorl of her navel, to the scut of brown fuzzy hair at the parting of her thighs. Did she know what she was revealing? I wondered, but although her eyes were dripping with tears, a little upturn at the corners of her mouth suggested that she knew very well.

"Miss Mabel", I said softly, "If you will promise to behave yourself with me and be a good girl, I could remit the rest of the punishment."

We both looked out of the corner of our eyes at the razor strop hanging over the wash-stand.

"Thank you Mr Cowell, you are very sweet", she replied, "but how can I promise to be good in your company when I all too often want to be naughty?"

"Very well then, lie over the bed. I shall give you half a dozen with the strop. But, if it hurts too much, just say "Stop", clearly and I shall stop at once."

She blushed, and silently complied. Six hard blows of the razor strop followed one on another, streaking the crimson with dark, almost purple bruises, white-edged where the edges of the strop left weals on the tender skin. Now she was crying in earnest, but still quiet and strangely self-possessed. I began to wonder which of us was the strong, and which the weak one.

I spoke tenderly. "Would you like me to put some soothing cold cream on your poor bruised cheeks?"

"Yes, if you please", she replied, and placed herself back across my knees, skirts still held high.

I felt almost intoxicated by the woman's scent that rose from her heated body, as I smoothed cream, gently in littler circular motions on the flaming, scorchingly hot flesh. At first I kept to the bruised areas of her bottom and the tops of the thighs, which I had hit once by mistake with the strop.

The crying gradually ceased, and she lay, passive and still. Now I had reached the testing time, and I took a huge risk, that quite frightened me. Could I, even mow, have misunderstood, and mistaken her innocence for coquettishness?

My fingers slid, slowly and cautiously down between her parted thighs, Down from the globes of her bright bottom, up from the streaked red and white thighs, and I was stroking the line of her secret parts, what the men of my childhood, in men's company called "queynt" or "quim", and the outway vulgar called "cunt".

Still she did not protest, and reassuringly, I could feel the slick moisture on and between the lips. Her thighs parted just a little further, and my fingers continued their exploration. Not a word was spoken, but she again made the little groaning sound, just at the level of a whisper she had made when I spanked her. My fingers moved more boldly...

I glanced at the bedside clock. It was getting late.

"Miss Mabel...." I began.

The voluptuous moment popped like a balloon. She dissolved into a fit of uncontrollable giggles that tipped her of my lap onto the floor in a tangled mass of clothing, and she lay on the floor, laughing, hiccoughing and rolling around. A minute or two passed before she caught enough of her breath to speak.

"Oh Arthur, you are so funny. Calling me Miss Mabel, when you have seen and touched more of me that even my mother, since I learned to bathe myself."

"Let's be on the safe side, my darling. I'll remain Mr Cowell; you'll stay Miss Mabel, even when we are private. We cannot afford a mistake that will make people curious about us. And by the bye, I wanted to tell you that your mother will be back from Church in a few minutes."

She picked herself up in a flurry of bare thighs and grey stockings and brushed down her dress.

"Very well, Mr Cowell. I shall return to my room."

This time she kissed me, not on the cheek, but firmly on the lips.

I later learned that when her mother and sister returned, Miss Mabel was lying face down on the bed, a hot-water bottle in the small of her back, and a damp cloth around her head. They quietly withdrew, and took her dinner to her on a tray.

That evening, I was in my room reading when the door slid open and there stood Miss Mabel, thrusting at me a slim newspaper parcel.

"Here", she said, kissing me again, "you may find a use for this. Mother bought it years ago, but she could never bring herself to use it"

Tied with a pink ribbon bow, it was the sort of crook-handled cane sold for a halfpenny at the local ironmonger's, Although ostensibly for beating rugs; I have sometimes thought that the stout matrons bending them and swishing them in the air at the back of the shop, seem often to have more lively targets in mind than carpets.

Thus ended the day, with a kiss and a promise.