The clack-clack of the typewriter filled the office as Amelia Travers picked her way through desks piled high with old tea chests. Many were over-ladened with business sundries and long dead accounts for transactions now forgotten. She was a slight girl from the modern cut with a dark page-boy bob and a straight up and down dress that tried vainly to hide her curves and ended at the knees.
From the sound of the typing it was obvious that someone was having a time of it and was no expert.
“Hello,” Amelia called out.
The typing stopped for a moment and a tweedy young man with a pipe stood up from behind a wall of tea chests at the other end of the room.
“Who the Dickens are you?” he barked, taking a hard suck on his pipe and sending up a cloud of heavy blue smoke.
“Amelia Travers,” Amelia said brightly and then in her best head-girl manner straightened up and extend a very straight right arm.
The man regarded her suspiciously and took another pipe-drag.
“Your new secretary,” she offered as if that said it all.
“What do you look like?” the man said incredulously, the suspicion not having left his face.
“Oh, I’m a modern, it’s all the thing rather,” Amelia told him enthusiastically.
“Not a damn flapper,” he groaned, “I was hoping for a chap this time.”
Amelia pursed her lips. She had heard it all before.
“Well think of me as a chap then,” Amelia suggested. “I can type 80 words a minute and match it with my shorthand.”
“Can you make tea?” the man asked.
“At a pinch, would you ask a male secretary that?” Amelia’s nose crinkled.
“Damn right,” the tweedy young man shot back.
He wasn’t bad looking, if a bit old-fashioned. He was probably old enough to have served in the war, but apart from the severity of his eyes, there was nothing to suggest he was damaged in anyway.
“Then I’ll crack on with the tea,” Amelia said brightly.
“Yes and then you can finish typing this up,” he sighed.
“What about the mess?” the new secretary asked. As she spoke she retreated back to where she thought she had spied the makings for tea.
“Just moved in, new offices, hence the new secretary, namely you Miss Travers,” he said as he picked up a pile of papers and put them down again less than a foot from where they had started.
“Am I right in supposing you are Duncan Whittington?” Amelia called out from where she manfully juggled with the kettle and pot. The kitchenette was served only by a spirit stove and a row of earthenware pots which contained in turn tea, sugar and biscuit crumbs.
“Well I’m not the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Duncan answered.
“No, you only type like him,” Amelia countered.
“Does the Archbishop type?” he asked puzzled.
Amelia frowned. She hoped her new boss wasn’t going to be a dimwit.
*
Over the days and weeks that followed the office slowly took shape and they even had a telephone installed. Much of the organising had been down by Amelia, not that Duncan showed the least appreciation. It was almost as if he was treating the arrangement as temporary.
“Just what is your problem with me?” Amelia finally asked, rounding on him over tea one day.
Duncan frowned. “Well look at you, are you a boy or a girl? I can’t swear, I can’t talk about the cricket and I can’t date you.”
Amelia laughed, “Why not?” she asked.
“Why not what?” he replied.
“Well if it comes to that, all three, although I must admit I don’t know that much about the cricket, I am more an Association Football girl myself,” Amelia giggled.
“There you are then,” Duncan said sharply poking the air with his pipe, “What kind of girl likes football?”
“Don’t you like the way I look? Or is it the way I act? Or is it that I am a girl at all?” Amelia asked pointedly folding her arms.
“I’m the boss around here and you don’t even call me sir, you don’t… don’t…” he waved at her with his pipe and shook his head in lament for his loss of words. The filly was too smart for him and he didn’t like it. “Why if my sister acted and dressed the way you do I would put her across my knee.”
“Well Sir, that is soon remedied isn’t it?” she smiled. “I’ll call you Sir, but if you can point to a single thing I do wrong then you can spank me. How does that suit?”
Duncan opened his mouth to answer and then coughed to hide his discomfort. He was being manipulated again.
“And just who decides when you do something wrong, that is what I would like to know?” he said sharply.
“Well you do, you’re the boss after all,” Amelia said pleasantly.
“And if like my sister I decide to spank you on the bare bottom and send you to the corner for an hour after work…?” Duncan countered, calling her bluff.
“You can send me to bed without supper if you have a mind to,” Amelia said reasonably, “I am quite a good sport you know Sir.”
“Well what if I said you are all wrong and that I don’t like flappers or moderns as you call them, what then? Perhaps I should spank you just for being a rebel as the newspapers advise?” Duncan was on solid ground now; he would soon shut her up.
Amelia’s heart skipped a beat and she had the decency to blush.
“May I lock the door first or do you intend to shame me in front of the post boy should he drop by?” The idea thrilled her to the core, but she felt a little sick all the same. What if he called her out on it?
Duncan’s palm itched, but a sense of justice prevailed. “Alright, perhaps I wasn’t being fair. But one thing wrong you say? What a typing error or forgetting the biscuits?” he put forward doubtfully.
“When have I ever forgotten anything and as for errors…” she frowned as if trying to remember, “Have I yet made any Sir?”
“Well just don’t, that’s all,” he harrumphed, “Now get on with your work.”
*
Duncan sat intently writing on a pad on his knee. His pipe was set at a jaunty manly angle, although it had long since gone out. But Amy could tell at once that he was annoyed about something from the tense way he sat and his failure to acknowledge her arrival, even with his usual look of disapproval.
“Is there something wrong?” Amy asked brightly.
She had just got back from lunch and despite being 10 minutes late she was well on top of her work.
“You tell me,” Duncan growled without looking up.
“You mean I’m late?” Amy asked, now ready to apologise.
Duncan looked up at the clock and raised an eyebrow.
“I hadn’t noticed,” he muttered.
“What is it then?” Amy pressed him.
Duncan whipped the pipe from his mouth and used it to point vigorously at a pile of papers. Then he returned to his scribble.
Amy tentatively reached for the paperwork he had indicated and carefully turned it right side up from her point of view. There was nothing wrong that she could see…
“Oh…” Amy blushed and suddenly got a sinking feeling.
Turning over several letters she saw the error. The last was addressed to the previous, and there seven such misaddressed letters.
“Oh indeed,” Duncan said sharply.
Amy sighed. “Well I can soon fix that, it won’t take me half an hour.”
“Is that all you can say?” Duncan growled.
Amy shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry, I’ll stay late if I have to.”
“That’s what I thought,” he muttered, adding, “Bloody girls.”
Amy frowned and slipped off her coat before heading for the kettle to make tea. She hadn’t got 20 feet when the penny dropped.
Ten minutes later she returned with a tray.
“Biscuits are there?” Duncan muttered, still engrossed in his work.
“Not yet,” Amy said enigmatically. “I brought you another selection first.”
“Eh?” Duncan said, now looking up.
He had to think for a moment about what he was looking at, for on the tray was a hairbrush, a ruler and woman’s canvass tennis shoe.
“I had to improvise,” Amy said, “I hope you can manage with these,” she added ruefully, “With just one of them hopefully, but that’s up to you I suppose.”
“What the Dickens?” he spluttered.
“I told you I was a good sport,” Amy told him with a hint of apprehension. “I mean you are going to spank me aren’t you? That was what we agreed?”
“Ah… hmmm, yes I see,” he said uncomfortably.
“You’re not wet are you?” Amy asked, now sounding surprised.
Duncan’s demeanour became stern again and he gave her a look. “Certainly not,” he said sharply.
“Well?”
Duncan tried to remember how they did it at school, but there was no cane to hand. Then he remembered his sister and her little talks with his father.
“Yes, well… you know how this is done…” he found a commanding voice from his army days.
Amy made a grimace and answered through a row of closed teeth, “Up or down?” she asked.
Duncan frowned.
“My… you know, my smalls, my under things?” Amy said, her voice trailing to a whisper.
“My mother and father favoured down for my sister,” Duncan replied, not sure if it was quite done.
“So did mine,” Amy agreed miserably.
Before Duncan could comment Amy blushed and turned her back. After some fumbling under the hem of her skirt she said, “Oh bother.”
She shot a look back and then shrugged. In short order her slip and then her brief bloomers slid south to her ankles and she daintily stepped out of them.
“They got tangled,” Amy explained.
“My mother used to pin my sisters skirts to her waist up at the back,” Duncan said casually, he wasn’t sure yet if that was the thing. “You know… as a shaming to-do,” he explained quickly when he saw Amy’s look of consternation.
“Oh… oh yes I see, I get that… but pins are so fiddly and…” she thought of the risks of being pricked by him or worse being fumbled in a way that would be injurious to her dignity. “It was much the same at home, you know, when I was younger… the shame part I mean, but my sisters and I just had to take our dressed off and petticoats if… well that doesn’t matter…” she was babbling.
“Well then…?” Duncan wasn’t sure this wasn’t going too far and he was beginning to feel a cad.
“Look, here,” Amy said with a sigh and with her back still turned she quickly unfastened her dress in back and stepped out of it.
Duncan gasped and averted his eyes. Amy’s bottom was alabaster smooth, like one of the three graces in the museum. “I say,” he said.
“There doesn’t seem to be a spare corner,” Amy said hesitantly her hands cupped before her even though she hadn’t turned to face him. “Shall I just face the wall here?” She felt her face burn, and it was a sure thing that her mother would have fainted dead away in the same circumstances. But Amy was a modern and would show some spunk.
“Yes, good idea,” Duncan said, now finding his resolve. “And put those hands on your head.” It was something his sister always had to do.
The question was, how long should he keep her there before spanking her? He sat down and free of her gaze let his eye surrender to the art of her half naked form. No rush was there, at least half an hour.
*
Amy fitted across Duncan’s knee easily and with her maidenhood safely tucked from sight she almost took comfort in the warmth of his thighs.
“How… how many?” Duncan said more to himself than her.
“That’s rather up to you isn’t it?” Amy said, feeling out of sorts and all at sea with embarrassment but determined not to show it.
“Yes quite,” he said sharply swatting her upturned bottom with a sting.
“Ooh,” Amy squealed.
Duncan spanked her again and put some weight into it.
“Ah,” she gasped but for the next dozen spanks she limited herself to making faces he could see and managed to hold her tongue.
But little by little she became breathless and after two or three minutes began to pant as she might playing tennis and her heels kicked up as she squirmed.
“Oh, ummm,” she grunted, now getting ever more vocal.
“Not such the clever little miss now are we?” Duncan laughed, now warming to his task. His gentleman was certainly standing up and taking notice.
Amy felt him rise too, but decided fair was fair and it was better not to mention it. It was certainly something a modern should be prepared for in life.
Duncan’s hand burned and he could see from the deep red cloud staining both Amy’s bottom cheeks that she was sore too. But he sensed she wasn’t yet all in. So taking up the pump from the tray he laid it against her bare bottom.
The first swat got Amy’s attention and she yelped. Thereafter all resolve retreated and the rest of the spanking was a vocal affair that left her both breathless and on the edge of some genuine tears. In fact if he could but see her face he would know that her eyes were now two pools about to overflow.
“Alright, you can go back to face the wall now,” Duncan said with a final spank.
“Yes Sir,” Amy said ruefully.
“A half an hour to contemplate your sins and then we will attend to that hairbrush,” Duncan said brusquely.
“But…” Amy gasped her eyes and mouth perfect Os as she half turned to gape at him.
“Well you were 10 minutes late,” Duncan said reasonably.
“Oh… yes, I forgot,” Amy winced, “Darn it.”
This time she faced the wall and thrust her bottom at him as if to show how much of a sport she really was.
“You know, I am beginning to like you,” Duncan chuckled.
Amy giggled. “I am beginning to like you too Sir.”
