Bea Isfor

This is a story I wrote in Hobart in April 1996, so I would have been 23 then: it is one of the first spanking stories I wrote. It is entirely made up, names and the club itself are all imagined, but the external geography of Hobart is accurate as is the name of Tasmania University (it’s where I was studying at the time). This was one of four stories I wrote in what I had hoped to be a series of twenty-six, one for each letter of the alphabet. This is Belinda, another two were Jessica, (a girl at a boarding school who is woken up in the middle of the night to be caned in front of the entire sixth form), and Deborah, (a young woman in her first job who is taken by a sexual predator as she walks home from work, but is spanked rather than raped). Rachael, (a young babysitter spanked by the parents of her charge for allowing him to break something), was re-used recently in Drought. I began stories called Anna (a nineteenth century maid caned for sloppiness, and named after Madam Karenina) and Natalia (a sixteenth century woman artist beaten by her father for being better than her brother, based on Artemisia Gentileschi), but never finished them.

I hope you like Belinda, I was very pleased to find her hidden in an old file of holographs, she was my favourite of the girls, although Jessica’s was the best story. (Sadly I have not got copies of the other stories only Belinda’s.)

This is a recent typing up of the original handwritten copy: I am very pleased to tell you that my handwriting has improved in the past eleven years, as has my grammar. I hope my storytelling has too, I like this story but I think it a bit stiff in form.

B is for Belinda

Belinda pulls her right shoe out of the box beneath her bed and pulls it on with a grimace. The toes are tight, she needs new ones, but then she needs money for so many things that shoes for Birdbar are low on her to-buy list. She stands up, clenches her toes, and steps off towards the kitchen.

Belinda Messenger is twenty-two years old and in her second year of a B.FA at Hunter Campus of Tasmania University, focussing on the History of Art and completing a practical course in photography. She loves that the college sits on the old wharf of Hobarttown; she imagines the convicts and screws who used to walk the very cobbles she daily walks between her flat in Wapping, her work in Salamanca Place, and the college on Hunter Island. She had been delighted to read in the Saturday Tasmanian that one of the bars local to her was recruiting hostesses, so whilst her classmates waitress tables or work in childcare, “Bella Mess” is paid to drink and talk to nice men.

Birdbar is located in a cellar beneath The Salamanca Tavern, and continues Salamanca Place’s long tradition of providing an ancillary service industry to the maritime communities of the Southern Ocean, and now of Antarctica. The Australian and French exploration vessels Aurora Australis and L’Astrolabe are both wintering in port, although the Russian one is not in this year. Belinda enjoys the company of the sailors, it is only officers who are allowed into Birdbar by Michal, the big Czechoslovakian at the door, but there are plenty of other houses of ill-repute for the lower cast of sailor to release his seamen. She enjoys the Australians and the Russians, but the French are her favourite. “Bonsoir, je’mappelle Belle, je suis tres jolie” she will often say to great applause.

Belinda’s shoes make click-clack as she traverses Murray Street and crosses into the gardens in front of Parliament House. The greenies are still encamped there, re-enacting Sunbury and extravagantly puffing mary-jane in protest at the draconian (Van Diemonian) restrictions on the use of said relaxant. She passes them without speaking to anyone, they are all too far out of it to see her anyway. She turns out of the gardens, walks along past the furniture shop and in the front door of Birdbar.
“Dobre vecer Beleenda”
“Ahoj Michal.”
Michal smiles, Belinda is the only one of the girls who has bothered to learn the Czech word for “hello”, in fact she is the only one who really speaks with him. Belinda briefly touches Michal’s hand as she enters, believing it is always a good idea to be friendly with the biggest boy in the room.

“You’re late Ms Messenger.” It is team coordinator Gretchen, known by the girls as Hausfrau.
“I’m sorry ma’am.”
“Two extra for you tonight.”
“Of course ma’am.”
Gretchen is herself only twenty-nine, but she is old. She has a mouth like a cat’s arse, both in appearance and output: with wiry hair and shoulders like a man. She is living evidence that the Berlin Wall was only downed seven years ago, Gretchen is everything everyone ever said about the women of the GDR.
“Room Seven.”
“Thank you ma’am.”
“And don’t forget the two, I shall ask.”
“Of course ma’am, thank you.”
Gretchen walks off, Belinda mutters “slag.”
“Four!” Gretchen doesn’t turn, but she has heard.
“Sorry ma’am.”
“Extra, mean is now six.”
“Understood ma’am.”
“In centre.”

Spanks. That’s what the two extra four mean is now six refers to. Belinda’s job is to chat to men, and occasionally women, fetch them drinks, share drinking with them, (but no alcohol for her), and allow herself to be spanked by them when deemed necessary. Sometimes the girls would also put on a “show” where several of them would be called up to go over a knee in the centre of the room for public displays of correction. This is what Gretchen had meant by “centre”, Belinda is going to receive six smacks during the evening show.

Belinda enters Room Seven and sees three men seated in a cloud of tobacco. Her friend Felicity is already present, sitting between two of the men and drinking Fanta through a curly straw. The men have bourbons on ice. Felicity looks up at the new arrival.
“Gentlemen, may I present Ms Belinda Messenger: aka Bella Mess.”
Belinda executes a neat bow.
“Who is, oh look, seven minutes late. Hausfrau?”
“Two,” replies Belinda, looking around the room to find who might look least likely to hurt her. Sometimes it is a gamble, drunken men can hit very inaccurately, or very very hard: you never know which.
“Come here then.” Felicity raises her arm and smiles. Belinda shoots her a look of gratitude. “Excuse me for a moment good sirs, Bella needs a belting. Turn around Bella.”
Belinda turns where she is in the room, and puts her hands on her knees. Felicity steps around behind her, and puts a hand on her back. With a single word, lateness, she brings the other one down in two smart slaps to Belinda’s tightened bum.
“Sorry Flicker.”

Bella and Flicker enjoy the company of the men, drinking Fanta politely through curly straws as the sailors sink deeper into a second bottle of Sam Cougar, but soon enough comes eleven o’clock and the closing of the siderooms. State licensing laws allow Birdbar to remain open only until midnight, so the last hour is always spent in the Central Room so as to make sure everyone is accounted for at closing time. Two of the sailors return to their ships at this point, but one continues in to the Central Room, walking surprisingly steadily with a girl in each hand. Save Belinda’s entry there have been no more corporal punishments in Room Seven tonight.

The trio arrive to find that they are last ones in, although that is to be understood as Room Seven is the furthest from the Central Room. Gretchen is standing on the raised circle in the middle of the room along with Mr Darwin, who is both the licensee and the manager, and some of the party from Room Four. Gretchen is speaking into the microphone.
“I see Ms Bella and Ms Flicker have joined us, so now our party is complete and the fun is able to begin. Mister Darwin has some things to tell us now.”
Mr Darwin takes the microphone and proceeds to explain that there are two sets of punishments due this evening, before the men can ask for some “free smacks” upon the girls. Two girls have been late, and one girl has spilled a drink on her client: indeed the clumsy girl has also been one of the late ones. These offences have been dealt with in the rooms, but will be addressed publicly as well. The girl from Room Four looks down, she knows she is owed six smacks for the spill and two for the lateness, indeed she has already received eight spanks in Room Four, but because she is going to be smacked for two transgressions then an implement will be used in the Central Room.
“Ms Rosie?” The girl, Belinda’s classmate Rosanna Bain, lifts her head.
“Yes sir it is true.”
The man from Room Four sits down, and pats his lap, Rosie bends over it and is paddled eight times: it appears as though the man is quite sober as the paddling is both direct and well measured. Rosie squints and grunts.

“Ms Bella? And your companion as well please?”
Belinda knew this was coming, she has been the other late girl and although she has already been smacked by Flicker she knew that there was always a Centre Room smack for that as well. Then there were the four for insulting Gretchen, but since these are separate incidents Bella will not receive the paddle.
Rooms Four and Seven trade places on the stage, and Belinda receives two very hard swats from the man, bent across his knees. Gretchen then sends the man back to the booth with Flicker, tells Belinda to bend over the stool, and delivers four hard smacks of her own. As Belinda is standing up, the man calls out “she’s nicked my wallet!”
An investigation follows, which over the course of twenty minutes scours the man’s pockets, Belinda’s pockets, Room Seven, and the booth in Central Room. The wallet cannot be found, the man all the time insists that Belinda had taken it. Belinda protests her innocence, but Mr Darwin decrees that until the wallet be found, both she and Felicity will be held accountable: which both girls know means more spanks for them.
And so back to the Central Room. Belinda goes up first, still protesting her innocence but knowing that all will be sorted out in terms of the theft. She feels able to deal with another smack, knowing that she will not have to handle Police and so forth.

The man pulls Belinda over his knees and Mr Darwin leans across and folds up her skirt. Gretchen hands the man the paddle and gives him a single worded instruction: “twenty”. The man smiles, and began the smacking. Belinda continues to protest her innocence, between gasps, but the smacks kept coming. At twenty he pushes Belinda off his lap so that she falls heavily to the floor, and then calls out that he has been only joking, but now bring the other one. Felicity protests, Belinda stands up and begins to straighten her clothes. Mr Darwin asks what the man means and he says that it is all just part of the game, he’s now smacked the blonde one and it is the red-head’s turn now.

The wallet had never been stolen, it is locked in the cloakroom safe.

Mr Darwin informs the man that since he has made a false accusation against Belinda he has two options: either accept a spanking from Belinda, or be banned from Birdbar. The man accepts the ban, saying he is not sorry for what he has done as it has all been worth the experience of “spanking a pretty blonde’s bare arse in front of my mates”. Mr Darwin has Michal evict the man, to great cheering from the other men in the bar who give three cheers to “patient Bella, a good sort.” Bella smiles shyly and presses down the front of her skirt.
“I was not bare arse,” she tells the men before stepping off the stage and heading to the Ladies to fix her face up. Felicity assures her that since the uniform for the girls involves black pantihose, which were obviously not the colour of bare flesh, and had remained in place upon Bella’s lower half, the men had been aware of her legs being covered all along. “Good,” replies Belinda, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m a slag.”