Mary had felt for a while that there was something she needed to do, and the more she suppressed it, the more the feeling would ambush her in unguarded empty moments. There were plenty of those in the few days leave between a week of night shifts and her return to days, especially as Donald had been called away to the commissioning of a new power plant in Malaysia and both Ashley and Johnnie were at university, leaving Mary to rattle around the still, vacant house. She tried cross-stitch and crosswords to consume the hours, but eventually realised that she had to act; she plucked up her courage, made the arrangements and was soon heading north on the M6.
She bypassed Preston and Lancaster, eventually leaving the motorway at a lightly used slip road which was signposted to the Lake District and small North Pennine towns. She took the easterly road towards the lower hills, which soon narrowed to a single carriageway, rising and falling between dappled woodland until she crested a brow where fences gave way to dry stone walls and her destination was suddenly indicated along a track-like minor road. In a mile or so she came into the small village, which boasted neither pub nor church, but she easily found her destination from the meticulous directions she had been given; it was a pleasant large house fronted by two picturesque bay windows and two large, plain upstairs windows surrounding a shiny front door as in a child's painting. She parked carefully on the verge to avoid a lazy pair of mallards sunning themselves on the warm grass, collected her sports bag, lifted the ancient brass knocker and let it fall against the door; the echoes resounded through the house and she dared not knock again.
A man, somewhere between middle-aged and elderly, opened the door. He welcomed her courteously, ushered her into a sitting room and offered her a cup of tea. She assessed him rapidly with a practised eye; he was the kind of man she liked to have on her ward, one who would be no trouble and would bear the discomfort of medical procedures with cheery fortitude. His well tailored but well-worn suit and upright posture hinted at a military background. As she drank her tea Mary took in the details of the room, which was remarkably, almost fastidiously clean and tidy; no discarded magazines or pending correspondence lying around, and the room was clearly a no-go area for dust. Through the rear windows she could see a birdbath sat squarely in a neatly trimmed lawn, and an ordered row of shirts pegged to the washing line. So unlike Donald, who was incredibly untidy, and Mary had often surmised that, if he was equally chaotic in his work environment, his power stations would surely explode as they came on-line. Yet it was Donald who had simply refused to countenance the thing she most wanted to do, unlike this older man whom she had discovered on the Internet.
"So, Miss Jones, would you like to go upstairs or stay down here?" the man inquired, making it clear that, in this house at least, no concession would be made to her marital status.
"Upstairs, please, Sir," replied Mary, for there would surely be a better view of the hills from above.
"When you've finished your tea, I'll give you a tour of the house," offered the man, and Mary nervously swallowed the last of her tea and followed him up the wide central staircase.
The room to the left at the front of the house was the master bedroom, and had been maintained as though awaiting an inspection; the only articles on the carpeted floor were a pair of slippers neatly aligned to the edge of the three-quarter-size bed, which was covered in a candlewick bedspread. The retro feel was complemented by a heavy old wardrobe and a large, splay-footed alarm clock which ticked loudly. The second room was clearly a guest room, containing a double bed bearing a continental quilt and a shelf with an eclectic set of books and magazines; one wall was taken up with built-in wardrobes, which the man obviously considered superfluous to his own needs. Behind the guest room were a spotless bathroom and then a small utility room, the only room in the house which bore even a hint of clutter, stacked with items such as signed cricket bats and ancient globes showing the contours of long-forgotten imperial outposts. There remained one room for Mary to enter at the back of the house.
The final room delighted Mary; it was spacious and airy, and provided fine views of the distant fells, drenched in early autumn sunlight which also gave the pastel lemon walls a tangy glow. Beyond the lawn and a painted fence stood tall, dark nettles which shielded a stream from sight, but its tumbling and trickling patter over limestone could be heard, competing with birdsong. The room contained just a tall cupboard, a hard, upright chair and a metal frame with a padded, raised central bar.
"This will be just fine, Sir!" enthused Mary.
The man smiled slightly.
"Good, in that case I'll see you here in five minutes," he said, and positioned himself on the chair. Mary went to the bathroom to get changed.
She removed her socks, jeans and shirt and folded them neatly on the bathroom chair. Then she opened her sports bag, took out a white blouse, white knee socks and a maroon pleated skirt with matching tie and put them on - pleated skirts in adult sizes had proved difficult to purchase until Mary had once more gone on to the Internet to find a specialist supplier, who had also come up with the fifties-style buckled school shoes which Mary retrieved from the sports bag to complete her outfit. She tied her hair back with a bobble and returned to the back room, remembering to knock courteously on the door before re-entering.
"Now, Miss Jones, I expect you know why you're here?" the man said sternly.
Mary hung her head, and clasped her hands demurely behind her back.
"Yes, Sir," she mumbled, "I've been disobedient to my father and I need to get the belt. A real thrashing, Sir," she added, and began to recount her misdeeds.
The man clucked his tongue, opened the door of the tall cupboard and extracted a long strap with divided ends. He explained that this was a tawse, formerly used in Scottish schools, and would prove more than adequate for the job. He ordered her to lift her skirt, bend over the padded bar and grip the base of the frame.
"Could I hold the chair back instead, please, Sir, so I can see out of the window?" Mary asked.
The man agreed, and Mary, by now trembling with a mixture of fear and anticipation, took up her position.
The man swung the tawse high and lashed it firmly across both her buttocks, and she bit her lower lip to avoid crying out. Daddy had seldom hit her, and never very hard, even when, at sixteen, she had come in late off the back of a motorcycle and cheeked her mother with rocker bravado. A buzzard soared above a nearby crag, and Mary remembered seeing the buzzards, along with gruff ravens and perky-tailed wheatears, when she walked the Pennine Way with Daddy after completing her A-levels. He had been so proud of her, he had said then, and much later as he drifted in and out of consciousness at the hospital, but he hadn't known the half ... she gasped and screwed her eyes shut as the strap cracked across the tops of her bare thighs, and when she opened them again the buzzard was gone ... occasional truanting and smoking, then losing her virginity so casually, if only she could turn back the clock, confess all and give Daddy the opportunity to do what this man was now doing, to belt her and belt her and belt her ...
"Well, I hope you've learnt your lesson, Miss," declared an intruding voice, and Mary re-entered the world to see the man putting the tawse away, "and when you're ready I'll have another cup of tea waiting." He went downstairs, leaving Mary to wipe her eyes and regain her composure.
Mary dressed slowly and shuffled down the stairs to the sitting room, where she gratefully accepted the tea but declined even a comfortable seat. The man brought out what looked like a register, a formidable gilt-edged book, and she signed with a fountain pen against her name and the figure "20". Some of the previous names - mostly but not entirely female - had received thirty or even fifty lashes with the belt; Mary had asked for something above the bare minimum so as not to appear cowardly or half-hearted, but felt she had been pushed to the limit of her endurance.
"You'll be quite sore and bruised for the next couple of days, but you'll be fine for when you go back to work and the marks should have disappeared by the time your husband comes home," he reassured her, as Mary talked about Donald, her children and the walks they had undertaken in these northern hills.
"I grew up in this lovely old house," he explained, "and it would be a shame to let it go, but I can't run it on a pension alone!" Mary flushed at the gentle hint, and reached for her purse.
"You did very well for your first time," he continued, "so, Miss Jones, despite what you've told me I'm sure your father would have been very impressed with the way you've turned out." And, at the mention of Daddy, Mary flung her arms around the old disciplinarian and sobbed her heart out.
