In 1925 Mister
Vanderbilt constructed a new version of Auction Bridge - he called it Contract
Bridge - and the game started a craze that swept the entire world. Ten years later it had even reached the
sleepy village where Wilhelmina and her family resided.
The evening sky had turned dark over Academia Way, and
the navy blue painted tree-house - high in the tree overlooking the immaculately
manicured lawn - seemed to have turned jet black in the fading light. An elongated square of light green on that lawn marked
where the electric light from the Watson household hit the ground.
Somewhere, over a distant tract of farmland, an owl made
its lonely mating call.
It was the second hand in the third rubber of a session
of domestic Contract Bridge. Mister and
Mrs. Watson had the blue deck; the Green’s the red one. It was Mrs. Watson’s turn to deal, so Mister
Watson shuffled the deck thoroughly, and passed it to his left so that Mister
Green could perform the cut.
They were startled by a loud bang that came from under
the window sill.
“Ah - probably the hot water pipe. It often makes a thud and bang as it cools
down over-night.”
“Yes - of course,” agreed Mister Green who cut the deck
of cards and passed it to Mrs. Watson.
She dealt all fifty two cards, one at a time, to each of
the four players sitting around the green brazed card table. Two cut glass tumblers bearing a decent
measure of fine whiskey marked where the menfolk sat, and two dainty glasses of
sweet sherry where the ladies were.
With a current score of 60 below the line, the Watsons
only needed 40 more to win the rubber.
A part score in either minor would be enough.
Mrs. Watson picked up her cards, and started to sort them
out. Her breathing became slightly
belabored.
She was looking at all thirteen hearts - a solid sequence
from ace to king. She had read
everything that Ely Culbertson had written, but that erstwhile authority had
never dealt with how to bid a hand when holding a 13-0-0-0 distribution.
She opened and shut her mouth several times.
“Hell’s teeth!” whispered her husband, sitting opposite, a
tad too loudly for polite company.
“I say, old man …” interjected Mister Green.
“Sorry, old bean, but this is just the absolute bee’s
knees.”
“Not you as well!
I’m looking at thirteen spades!”
“Hearts,” offered Mrs. Watson.
“Diamonds. All
the diamonds. Every single one of them.” Mrs. Green was close to speechless.
Mister Watson, in a breach of rules that would have
caused serious gossip in some quarters, tabled his hand face up to reveal he
held intact the club suit.
“I say, Watson, you didn’t …?” Mister Green nodded meaningfully at the
displayed hand.
“Didn’t what, Green?
Stack the deck? Land’s sake man,
you watched me shuffle the pack. With a
riffle shuffle. I’m no card sharp!”
“Sorry old chap - It’s just that nothing like this has
ever happened to me…”
“What are the odds?
I think we should call the Gazette and see if they want a photograph of
this. It’s a perfect deal. That does not happen every day!”
“Indeed Monica - let us to the kitchen and make the
call. We might refresh our glasses as
well, at the
same time.”
The four trooped happily to the kitchen, home of the
telephone and also of fresh ice, to announce the news and bask in short lived,
even if well deserved, public acclimation.
---oo0oo---
The item not only made the Gazette - the village
newspaper: it also got a mention in the
Register itself. Which, in that part of
the world, was considered to be virtually the same as having National
coverage. Such fame; such glory!
Ely Culbertson himself was quoted as saying the odds of a
perfect deal was very, very long indeed.
But not impossible.
---oo0oo---
Just Wilhelmina lay on her back in the navy blue tree
house and stared outside at the small fluffy clouds wafting high in the deep
blue of a summer sky. (Every other
member of her extended family had a middle name: she alone did not and had thereby acquired the
odd prefix of “Just”. Some families are
notorious for doing inexplicably odd things like that.)
Her jet black ringlets seemed to make her face seem even
whiter than it really was. She had large
blue eyes over a snub nose and cupid mouth.
She would one day break the hearts of would be suitors by simply not
remembering their names. But for now,
school and the possibility of college pushed such thoughts firmly to the back
of her mind.
What did pre-occupy her was the perfect deal. So much upheaval. Should she confess?
Her bottom twitched at the thought. Father had a most fearsome strap. Made of the thick hard leather used for
infantry-troop boot-soles. Guaranteed
to curb the most wayward child.
Eventually.
And she had a history of carrying out the most audacious
pranks, despite any possibility of such pranks resulting in getting a pair of
buttocks that yelled in pain “Don’t do that again!” for hours on end. There
was only one possible outcome at the end of this. She sighed.
She stood up, tucked her blue short sleeved polo shirt
into her khaki shorts and prepared the long climb down the rope ladder to the
perfectly manicured lawn below. She had
an inkling of what troops must have felt before going over the top - but, they
did not have to face the ire of a father with a reputation of having a fierce
right arm. They had it much easier.
---oo0oo---
Mister Watson sat at the desk in his den, contemplating
the letter from his accountant which seemed to agree with the official position
that personal taxes had been slightly underpaid for the past few years. Drat. Back taxes, interest and penalties: all in all more than the price of a decent
bottle of single malt.
Just Wilhelmina walked in unannounced and stood squarely
to face him. She seemed to be devoid of
all emotion, save for the twisting of her hands behind her back …
“?” he said silently with the flick of an arched eyebrow.
“It was me.”
“Ah. What was
you?” He had been down this route
before. Some dire deed was about to be
confessed. His daughter always admitted
to the truth sooner or later … but wait a second - there was no outstanding
mischief to account for, was there?
She looked at the picture frame, hanging on the wall,
which housed a deck of cards sorted into four suits. The blue deck. Now preserved for all time. She nodded at it.
“The cards. That
was me.”
“What? What do
you mean it was you?”
“I fixed it. I
had no idea things would get so out of hand.
I thought you would have guessed straight away.”
“What do you mean, “fixed it”? You weren’t even there.”
“Putting a table cloth over a card table means that it
touches the ground on all four sides. I
was under the table all evening.”
“Under the table?
What on earth for??!” Father’s
voice was beginning to crack with incredulity.
“I’d got both a red pack and a blue pack sorted out in
order. I rolled a golf ball so it
smacked hard against the wall. It gave
me a good two seconds to make the switch.
More than enough, really.”
“What if we’d seen you?!”
“You’d have written it off as just another silly
prank. And since it was one that you’d
nipped in the bud, I bet you would’ve just sent me back to bed without doing
anything else. But you didn’t see me.”
“That we did not.
Oh lordy, oh lordy - what a mess you’ve made this time Wilhelmina.”
“Are you going to make me tell Mother? And the Greens?”
“Good heaven’s no!
The shock! The shame! I could not … They should not … No. Your silly prank must never become public
knowledge. Never!”
She pursed her lips and looked down at the floor in front
of her black sandal shoes.
“I’m sorry, father.”
“Sorry? I should
give you a damn good hiding for this.
You have no idea how much distress you might have wreaked. And all for some stupid prank of yours. Do your friends know about this?”
“Tom, Charlie and Henry?”
“No, I meant those girls who you hang around with,”
Wilhelmina permitted herself a smile. “That’s them. We have nicknames.”
“Ah. Right.”
“And no - they aren’t in on this one. There’s just me who knows.”
“And now me. I
wished you had kept it to yourself, you know.”
She grimaced and wrinkled up her nose. “I was going to. But then I knew I’d have to tell you sooner
or later. So I thought I’d get it over
and done with.”
“I don’t want this to go any further. It’s between just us two. Is that quite clear?”
“I know. I
shan’t breathe a word to anyone else.”
“Right. That’s
settled. And now for you.”
She felt her buttocks grip themselves tightly, unbidden,
as if they had a will of their own.
They seemed to be aware what was going to happen in the very near
future, and they did not view the prospect with any element of joy.
“We have the house to ourselves for the next hour or
so. Your mother will not be back from
shopping until five. Which is fine - I
do not want to make a big thing out of this - by the time she and the rest of
the family get home you should have regained your composure.”
“Yes father.”
“Go to your bedroom and get yourself ready. This time you have gone far too far and I
shall teach you a lesson in self-control that might come to mind should you
ever come up with something as cock-a-namie as this again.”
“Yes father.”
She spun on the heel of her left sandal and walked out,
head held high, to go and wait for her father’s wrath.
As she climbed the stairs she felt a knot in her
tummy. Some spankings she had gotten in
the past had been quite squirm inducing.
She doubted that this one would be in that category.
---oo0oo---
He opened the door and entered her bedroom. He was carrying the leather strap.
She had prepared herself for the spanking she was about
to get: upper body face down over the
end of the bed, two pillows under her tummy - shorts around her ankles and
underwear around her knees.
This was not the first time she had been taken to task
for making mischief. It occurred to her
that it really ought to be the last.
And shrugged off that idea as being totally inane.
“This needs to stop, Wilhelmina. You should be at college in a couple of
years. You are simply getting too big
to be spanked anymore.”
“Yes father.” She
looked back over her shoulder. “When
Charlotte messes up, they make her write an essay …”
“Charlotte? The
one who dipped my tie in pain? That Charlotte.”
“er… Yes. That
one. If you want, you could start
getting me to write essays instead of spanking me.”
“I rather think not.
If you are going to act like a ten year old, I shall jolly well treat
you like one.”
She turned her head to face the head board again. “Yes father. I know there might be consequences for what
I do. I’ve never tried to try to avoid
them.”
“Indeed, you never have. But - if you’re not going to mend your
ways, you may expect this to be repeated from time to time. Brace yourself.”
Unbidden, her buttocks tensed themselves up again. It was the moment of truth.
He took aim and delivered a firm crisp slap to her
rump. A band of deep pink instantly splayed
across both cheeks, making her wriggle an inch or two, and it produced a deep
throated grunt through her clenched teeth.
He set up a regular paced rhythm, until all 18 swats had
done as much damage as they could to a young lady’s bottom. Which, in the event, had turned into two
crimson orbs which promised to turn to dark shade of bruising before the
evening was out.
All he had gotten in return for so much vim and vigor was
18 clench-teethed grunts by way of response.
A two edged sword if you will - it made it easier to complete the
assigned number without alarming oneself over the severity of the treatment - but
a good old fashioned yelp of annoyed pain would have made it seem that the
lesson was really being learned.
He started to unroll the shirt sleeve on his right arm
down back to its normal length.
“Dinner at eight.
Are you going to be okay by then, or should I …”
“I’ll be able to walk normally by then, Father. I won’t enjoy it much, but there’ll be no
need for anyone to suspect that you’ve just given me such a thorough
strapping.”
“Good girl. Then
I’ll leave you to …” He waved vaguely in the general area of the
bedroom.
“Yes father. Now
that we are all square again, you need not worry about me telling anyone else
about our secret.”
He nodded and left, quietly closing the door gently
behind him.
She slowly stood up, checked that there were no tears on
her face and delicately touched her fresh wounds. It had started off a bit rotten, but to her
joyful surprise it had turned out to be very squirmy before it was all over.
She had always been convinced that she was the only
person on the entire planet who could find spankings to be enjoyable - a secret
she held steadfast to herself. The
consequences of anyone learning about it were just too appalling to
contemplate.
And her little secret was still safe! At
least her father did not have any inkling.
Otherwise he would not have given her such a blistering - that would
have made no sense at all.
She went to the bathroom to apply a cold water compress,
made out of a freshly soaked face flannel, to ease the sting back down a
little.
She pondered - her friends were chomping at the bit for
another prank to play on some hapless victim, and would be looking to her to lead
them into something worthwhile. But
she needed a few days in order that total normalcy could return to her
bottom. She would have to come up with
a reasonable stall … Or risk the
possibility of total mayhem being applied to her rump.
She was sure a reasonable stall would occur to her before
they all met in the tree house tomorrow morning. Mayhem was not an option. No - really - it wasn’t.
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