Early Seventies. Last of the Summer, just before the Autumn walks all over it. Mid Friday afternoon, storm coming, sky as sullen as my mood. Walking out the last of my high school days, did well in my last exams, just turned eighteen, ought to be as happy as a pig in shit but I'm not.
Want to see Sandra, my tutor. Known her a long time and we click like a copper's handcuffs, even if she's forty and a tiny bit, never dared ask. It's not a working day for her, but I know she's home, made sure she was. Half an hour's brisk walk, a kick this and kick that walk, a kick a cripple if I saw one kind of walk.
Nice little white stucco house, green roof, set in off the street, well kept little garden, wonder where she finds the time to keep the roses and the rest with all the work she's got but somehow she does. Old house, new money, but not newly rich bad taste money; Sandra has too much class for that. If class were perfume, she'd quietly exude it, not reek of it like a whore's handbag.
For all her class, she's got an easy way with her. Easy on the eyes and easy to talk to, easier than my mother at the moment. That don't mean she's EASY though. Might be Sandra and Calvin between us but that can change in a millisecond. You don't come the old soldier with her, found that out a long time ago.
Sandra ushers me in, steps back so I can take my sneakers and socks off inside the door, just a thing we have, makes me relax, bare feet on white shag pile carpet, relaxed makes me work harder she says.
As always her vibes say, "Make yourself comfortable, take the edge off." Not quite a, "Make yourself at home, piss in any corner you'd like," kind of comfortable mind, but it'll do, as it always does, and I feel some of my storm dark mood slip away as I enter her study, first room in her house, where she teaches students.
Light straw coloured walls, this room, with a few tasteful rural prints and a handsome old wall clock which, on pain of a few verbal slaps, I've learned not to watch, not openly anyway. All fits together nicely, just as her figure does.
I sit myself down door I've just come in through side of a large work table three feet wide four long, sit down in a been around black leather swivel chair, adjusted to my size. She'd known I was coming, had set it up beforehand. Never misses a trick, that one. I watch her lithe figure glide to the opposite chair, exact same but set up just that little bit so's you know who's boss higher.
Her chair looks out through a bay window into the garden, mine looks inwards, another situation she likes to exploit where she can. One hell of a teacher she is. Must be, to have got ME all the way up to and through my Senior! And my regular teachers? Well, as my old man, whom I've not seen since I was six, would have said, and for the most part accurately, "They wouldn't know if their arseholes were round, punched, bored, or countersunk."
As usual her white platform soled sandals glide ghostlike over the carpet, supporting five eleven of hourglass figure. Azure blue pantsuit, matching her eyes, white blouse under her jacket. Firm breasts and legs all the way up to her arse. She looks me over as she walks. And she's single, never been married. Hard to believe, but single she is.
She's quite a contrast to me, in my clean but rumpled faded blue jeans and brown tee. Hard middle distance runner's body I've got, straight black collar length hair and brown eyes. Same height as she, and for some reason she likes that, and my looks, but to be honest, if I were any more plain looking I'd be as ugly as a robber's dog. Still, what can't be cured must be endured, and her vibes say she doesn't mind at all.
Sits herself down, gives her down to tits length curly golden locks a toss so I can make out her perfect diamond face with its many laugh lines and announces, "Congratulations Calvin, you've made it into University, you know that?" Cut glass accent, soft or hard, depending. For now, it's soft.
I don't, but my mood is still so sour that all she gets by way of reply is a surly grunt. For a long moment, she says nothing, just lets her eyes look into mine. Not a stare, not a fake geeing up look, just empathy, or what I take for empathy.
"Thought you'd be happy, not just sit there looking like a reg'lar old Jack Nastyface. Want to talk about it?"
Again I don't, but the vibes are pushing my buttons, telling me nothing's secret with Sandra, so eventually, bit by bit I get it all out, my troubles at home, the arguments, the nagging I get, and last but not least, that my mother has grounded me for six months.
Same cut glass accent but a touch harder, "Can't say I'm surprised, with a year's worth of you coming home late, or not at all, not to mention not doing a damn thing you're asked, and as for some other things like break ins and shoplifting, well my lad, I'd keep up the running if I were you, might come in handy some day, eh?"
All of which is true, but on my surprised glance, she adds, "Oh, your Mum and I go back a long way Calvin. Went to the same school, you know that, and we ladies do gossip y'know." She laughs, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "You got off light. If you were mine, I'd have grounded you for a twelvemonth, and at least the half of that on bread and water. But you're not mine, and it's no skin off my nose. Is it?"
"Oh I just thought, what with you and Mum being old friends ..."
She cuts me off, not rudely but firmly, "And what would you have me do? Ring Angie and beg her to forgive your many sins? Oh Jaysus and Mary, why don't I phone the Pope while I'm at it? What's the number again, VAT 69? No, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to go home and do your time, won't you?"
She waits a sickening ten seconds, "Unless I punish you rather than your mother. She agrees with that, provided you consent."
"What would you do?"
"Cane your arse. Properly. Don't look so surprised. I went to a convent school, and was a teacher for a few years myself before I became a tutor. I've neither forgotten what a caning feels like, nor how to administer one. And I've got a spare room that's perfect for it."
I must look like someone's hit the back of my head with a rubber mallet, so she continues, "Don't worry, I'll give you some time to think about it, but before you do, I want you to know it'll be no easy way out. It'll hurt like hell, and it's not as if I'll give you some set number of strokes and that's it. You'll get as many as I think you need, enough to break you in fact, and I shall take care to make good practice upon you."
This last, she explains, was a military euphemism for shooting the stuffing out of something. Or someone, she adds in malicious good humour. She lets me go to the bathroom, on my right, through a doorway then hard right, for a nervous pee, and when I return to my chair she says, offhandedly, "I'll give you fifteen minutes. I'm going to phone your mother for a bit of old girl's gasbag anyway, and I've the feeling you'll want to be alone."
She swiftly stands up, turns about, and walks straight out through a door in the wall away from the work table, heading for what I know is her living room and kitchen area. Thanks very much, Lady lay-all-the-cards-out-on-the-table Sandra.
I do want to be alone, no error, not that being alone makes things any easier. I'm in a cleft stick and I know it. On the one hand if I simply go home, there'll be yet another blazing row followed by sweet sufferin' Christ knows how much smouldering nagging afterward; whilst on the other hand I myself have some idea what a caning feels like, having collected a few both ways over my years at school, albeit half-hearted compared to what Sandra might dish out, and it's that unknown that has me sweating. What makes it worse is she's never the once hit me in all the years she's tutored me, she's always used her eyes, her voice, and her vibes. Oh shit oh dear, oh dear oh SHIT!
