Subculture by Sarah Veitch Page B

the sitting room Lisa took the armchair nearest the door. Her heart beat fast and hard, her calf muscles restless. She had to be ready for a verbal sparring, ready to flee.
    â€˜Right, Marie-Rose, will you do the honours?’ Michael Landers asked. Lisa stared at him then at the Receptionist, not quite sure what he was implying. Watched the forty year old woman roll up her full length dress sleeves.
    Then Marie-Rose patted her lap. ‘Come and lie across Auntie Rose’s knee, my dear,’ she said looking fixedly at Dania.
    The younger girl sat back further in her chair and glanced frantically around the room as if seeking an outlet. ‘Dr Landers. Aren’t you going to...?’ she muttered at last.
    â€˜Not this time. I want to relax awhile and finish my brandy,’ the former surgeon said.
    Lisa felt her own features freeze in dismay and shock. She’d been shamed enough being spanked in private in his surgical examination rooms. Surely he wasn’t going to let the Receptionist spank the Accountant in front of the other employees? She looked at Bakar the gardening boy, only to find his gaze fixed challengingly on Dania, who remained mutely seated and seemingly immobilised.
    â€˜Get that unpunctual little bum over Marie-Rose’s knee right this minute or you’ll never work for me again,’ Michael Landers said.
    â€˜It’s not right.’ Slowly the twenty-four year old got to her sandal-clad feet. Heels trailing, she made her way across the large square room, hesitating as she reached the stockier woman, then bent over her lap in a series of jerky movements. ‘Please let me keep my pants on,’ she whispered to no one in particular. ‘Oh please!’
    â€˜She’s especially shy because you’re here,’ Michael Landers said conversationally to Lisa.
    â€˜Well she needn’t be - I’m out of here.’ The herbalist muttered, getting quickly to her feet.
    She turned towards the door, half-expecting to hear Michael’s steps behind her, feel his strong arms around her waist, forcing her to watch the younger girl’s unveiling.
    â€˜No - stay.’ To her surprise, she recognised Dania’s pleading tone.
    Lisa looked back at the bent-over fair haired Accountant. ‘You shouldn’t have to... No one has the right to punish you in a physical way,’ she muttered. She started to leave again. ‘I can’t be part of this. It’s unseemly.’
    â€˜That’s the point,’ Michael Landers said.
    â€˜The main part of a public punishment is the humiliation,’ Marie-Rose added matter-of-factly, starting to stroke Dania’s dress-covered bottom. ‘So I’ll give her a less severe thrashing if you stay.’
    Lisa tried to keep her eyes fixed on Marie-Rose’s face, though her gaze kept wanting to stray to Dania’s lap-held buttocks. ‘I don’t understand,’ she admitted finally.
    â€˜Well, if Dania’s already shamed by having a stranger like you watching, I’ll only give her fifty spanks, whereas I’d normally stop and start until she’d taken a hundred,’ the Receptionist explained.
    Lisa hesitated, midway between her chair and the door. She stared, open-mouthed, at the matriarchal Marie-Rose, then said, ‘You’re putting me in an impossible situation. This is corrupt.’
    â€˜Actually, it’s quite the reverse,’ Michael cut in. Lisa looked at him wordlessly. ‘Tell me, if you had the opportunity of watching a willing woman being spanked on film, wouldn’t you take that opportunity? I mean, if no one ever knew that you’d played the video tape?’
    Lisa shifted her weight from foot to foot. ‘I might...’ she managed, ‘just out of curiosity. But that’s not the same thing.’
    â€˜Oh but it is - we’ve all admitted to ourselves that we like to see a girl wriggling under the palm or the cane or the