From the Top Shelf - Suzette's First Spanking

Today I have chosen to use another extract from Jacqueline Ophir's The Fellowship of the Rod. Two adolescent girls discover the excitement of spanking, thus beginning an odyssey that continues and develops through their teenage years.

One very hot, long day when Suzette and her friend Genevieve were chatting together in Genevieve's garden - watched indulgently by Genevieve's blonde, cheerful mother, who was basking under the shade of some ancient oaks - Suzette mused:

"I wonder what it's like to be whipped at school?"

Genevieve said: "I can tell you - it hurts."

"No," said Suzette, almost to herself, "I don't mean that."

"Then what do you mean, you vacant creature?"

"I mean...all that goes with....being hurt there and in that way."

"Be precise," said the older girl, who had by now adopted a leader's and mentor's role in the friendship.

Suzette fell silent.

Genevieve watched her curiously for a few moments. A sudden breeze shook the branches of the chestnut tree above their heads and a stray twig, broken off in a recent gale but as yet unfallen, slithered down from above and lay on the grass between them, shapeless yet significant.

Then: "Wait here," said Genevieve. She rose swiftly to her feet and crossed the lawn to the house. In a minute she was back, holding a book, which she arranged on her lap after resuming her cross-legged position opposite Suzette, and began to peruse carefully, turning briskly from page to page. After some moments she found what she was looking for and then passed the book to her friend, indicating some words with her finger.

Suzette obediently took the book and glanced at the appointed page. It was a poem called "La Tour d'Orleans" which Mlle Lambercier had read to them a a few weeks earlier, and it dealt with the St. Bartholomew Massacre - a subject in which the Protestant Lamberciers, whose ancestors had been involved, took a deep and abiding interest. Suzette remembered it only slightly.

"Now," said Genevieve, "you ought to know this poem already, but just to be fair I'm going to give you ten minutes to refresh your memory."

"Then what?"

"Then I'm going to test you on it. Errors will be punished." She looked, and sounded, quite calm and purposeful. Suzette, her thoughts racing, obediently bent her attention to the poem.

Of course it was quite useless - this concentration on a dry-stick collection of words in the light of the pendant implications.

"Question one: who was the Mayor of Orleans?"

Suzette didn't know. "One error," said Genevieve. "The Mayor was Phillipe Barzac; it says so, here, in the second verse. Who fell at the door of the Tower, blessing God?"

Suzette didn't know that either, and was awarded another error. Then she rallied - her best instincts overcoming her worst - and answered three questions in succession. Even so by the end of ten minutes interrogation, she had accumulated a total of thirteen 'errors'. Submissively she waited for what came next.

"Come with me, miss," said Genevieve, whose face was now faintly flushed with excitement. Suzette followed the older girl past the basking Mama, up the stone steps, through the hall, and up the stairs to Genevieve's bedroom.

Then Genevieve faced her. "Errors, I told you, would be punished. Are you sorry for your inattentiveness?"

Suzette began to giggle, despite the enormous intensity of the other's manner.

"Are you sorry?" repeated Genevieve sharply.

Suzette hung her head and nodded. And now curiously, at the very moment she relinquished the last shreds of reality and entered Genevieve's fantasy (or was it the other way about?) with a whole heart, she really did begin to feel sorry and regret her slack scholarship.

The matter then proceeded to its pretty conclusion. Suzette's 'errors' were 'punished', all thirteen of them, by blows from the palm of Genevieve, who took her young friend across her lap in best maternal style and carried out all other functions with a style that Mlle. Lambercier could not imitate. The uncovering of the target itself took more than five minutes, from first grasp of hem to final fold, tuck and pat. The delivery, slow, solemn and beautifully paced in order to extract the maximum psychological weight from every stage of the proceedings, took another five minutes. Then Genevieve introduced a further inspired refinement. She ordered the culprit to spend some minutes standing in the corner of the bedroom, displaying, under compulsion, the chastised area (a delicate rose hue, no more, for Genevieve's slaps had not been severe), holding her own skirts aloft in order to do so.

The consequent glow in the adolescent heart of the impressionable Suzette far outshone the glow in her nether regions.

After this the two friends frequently played such games together, when opportunity afforded. In a comradely way, they explored the lower reaches of this vast and multi-faceted stream of ideas, discovering for themselves certain basic principles, as well as a multitude of incidental details. Genevieve's inspiration of the Ritual Aftermath - which of course placed the actual execution where it should be, at the climactic point two-thirds of the way through the experience instead of at the end - was matched by Suzette's methodical exploration of the various possibilities afforded by the instruments of correction.

Remember, theirs was the age of the birch-rod's unchallenged ascendancy in matters of this sort - that is to say, in affairs of domestic and pedagogical discipline. A birch-rod, of course, need not be made of birch wood, nor must it conform rigidly to any given pattern of length, weight, number of twigs, suppleness or method of binding.

All these things absorbed Suzette's attention, as soon as the birch became a regular feature of the games she played in secret with Genevieve. Noticing this, the more psychologically attuned older girl hit on the idea of requiring Suzette to furnish the rods with which she would then be whipped - always on the gentle side of severity with vast attention to ritual. On the whole, Suzette did not want to whip Genevieve, and the other girl indeed showed no sign of requiring a role-reversal. Instinctively they both realised that the 'authority' with which Genevieve imposed her will on Suzette would be forever blighted were it to crumble, even temporarily. So, in their frolics, the two girls soon settled down to an accepted pattern, varied certainly in detail but never in basic premise.

The scenery, props and stage directions altered constantly, but the cast of characters never. Suzette the meek, inattentive, frequently chastised girl-pupil; Genevieve the authoritative, firm yet kind, self-controlled administratrix of nursery-schoolroom justice. No other actors ever joined their company while these blissful months lasted.

They grew older, and the shared obsession evolved with delicacy, precision and the occasional inspiration. Close though oblique questioning of adults, chiefly Genevieve's amiable if vague mother, unearthed new material. For example, it was from this source that they learned that, in the days of her childhood, when she had been brought up by Huguenot nuns, the favoured corrective instrument had been a short whip made of a stock perhaps ten inches long and up to a dozen leather tails - what later generations would refer to as a 'Martinet' after the French army captain who decided on its suitability for use in juvenile military institutions. Mme Rheinhardt was sadly under-descriptive about the actual mode of use - referring to it as "most indelicate" when questioned - but they soon found out for themselves. Suzette made one, Genevieve used it on her, and both pronounced it inferior to the two-foot bundle of fine twigs which was their usual instrument.

The only rival to the birch in their stock of props and tools was, perhaps not surprisingly, the open hand. It was somehow more intimate than the rod and, although the physical feelings it induced were at first dissimilar to those of la verge, these nonetheless accumulated to a similar pitch of voluptuous pain. The secret was to apply the spanks at a brisk pace, never varying, sharply but not severely, continuing the punishment until the heat and the exquisite discomfort slowly built to a pitch where immediate relief became a cardinal essential.. at which point the grip on the culprit tightened, the force of the blows increased, and their tempo likewise doubled.

Then Genevieve, the dramatist, introduced a new and exciting theme. She presented her friend with a new and unused book of blank sheets, explaining that this was to be their record of proceedings. She, Suzette, was to write in it. Sometimes Genevieve would give dictation. More often Suzette would be required to compose her own wording. It was a diary-cum-punishment book.

Once she made Suzette compose a poem to order, which task Suzette failed to achieve within the alloted time. So she made Suzette disrobe entirely, then lie across some pillows in the middle of the bed. She then spanked Suzette crisply, twenty times with her hand, commanded her to stay still then went away and returned with a small, lithe birch with which she proceeded to administer eight sharp strokes upon the willingly offered fundament of the younger girl, Suzette's bottom already suffused in rich colour from the warming-up process, now glowing briefly red in linear designs as the supple twigs made their hissing descent at unhurried intervals.

Both of them were nearly fainting with pleasure when the castigation drew to a close, but still Genevieve retained enough self-control to compel Suzette to sit at a writing desk, still naked as the day she was born, and write a short essay on the experience while its imprint was still fresh on her mind, and other places too. Then - the crowning touch - she made the naked girl stand upon a stool and read her work aloud. Only then did she bring the curtain down. Despite the graceful diminuendo, both girls were flushed in face and body, eyes alight, breathing hard.

They gazed in each other's eyes with deep satisfaction, sure in their relationship for eternity, sharers of a secret joy like lovers who have been consumed by a fine lust and are now sated - relaxed, happy and grateful. And, after all, that's exactly what they were.