Sunday 2 June 2013

Sunday, June 02, 2013 -

Mistress of Enderby Hall

by Tara Black
Published: May 29, 2013
Words: 22,998
Category: general
Orientation: M/F
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OPENING EXTRACT
Chapter 1 - Archive

Melinda George had arrived at the grand age of thirty-seven without experiencing an orgasm. Or so she supposed; it wasn't really something she brooded about. At odd times during her marriage of a dozen years she had felt, well, pleasurable sensations 'down below' (as her mother would have put it) but under the uninspired pumping of her husband they would come to nothing. Generally she had been left, if briefly, resentful and frustrated with a view of his back. The more forthright agony aunt might recommend masturbation, but she could hardly do that with him beside her and in the morning the issue would be gone from her mind. In any case, an upbringing where female anatomy was a taboo area had left her not only ignorant but had attached to the subject a distaste that kept her wilfully so.

The marriage had ended in divorce after he'd admitted an ongoing affair with a fellow office worker and with no children the break-up had been an occasion for relief rather than acrimony. Thank God it was over. With an honours history degree, Melinda had worked part time for years in the University Library, but her position had disappeared six months before in a series of funding cutbacks. And she was bored. There was the growing feeling that life was slipping by, trickling through her fingers with no residue of stimulation or satisfaction.

And that was her condition when she chanced on an advertisement in the local paper.

There is a vacancy for an Archivist with the Marchmont Collection which is a privately endowed library of historical materials relating to the regulation of the behaviour of women. Applications are invited from suitably qualified women with an interest in sometimes controversial questions of discipline in the home, school and the wider community. A curriculum vitae together with a short account of some personal experience that relates to the collection's theme may be submitted to its Keeper, Miss Samantha Morton.

Salary levels were generous and her experience would place her at the upper end of the range specified. The address indicated that the collection was held at 5 Abbot's Lane, near the heart of the old city where the earliest departments of the University were still housed. Melinda read the carefully worded notice again. It seemed plain that the focus was on the use of corporal punishment in the past, where for some decades it had seemed to have been consigned. Now, though, since its reintroduction on a trial basis in a selection of schools, it had indeed become the object of heated debate between the 'spare the rod' faction and their die-hard opponents.

She was intrigued enough to want more information, but then the last sentence brought her up short. What on earth was this Miss Morton looking for in a 'personal experience'? That applicants should have undergone - or even handed out - a caning or the like? Ridiculous. This was Britain, and, save a few schools, not Singapore.