There is a knock on the door, and the doorbell rings. It’s not one of those fancy camera doorbells that could give her some sort of forewarning, so it is with surprise that Hannah opens the door to find a woman she doesn’t know dressed in a uniform that she doesn’t quite recognise.
“Mrs Hannah Ross?” the uniformed lady asks.
“Hum, yes?” Hannah answers, “What is this about?”
“Afternoon ma’am,” the woman says. Her voice is pleasant, her tone friendly. Her smile, however, does not reach her eyes. “I am Officer Jeanette Pearson with HMAO; may I come in, please?”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah says, confused, “H-M-what now?”
“HMAO, ma’am,” the uniformed lady says, “His Majesty’s Adultery Office”
“Hum… A-adultery…?” Hannah hesitates. Thoughts start racing in her head. What kind of joke is this?
“I really think it’s best if we have that conversation inside, Mrs Ross,, the woman insists, “We’ve no need to let the entire street have a listen, do we?”
Hannah hesitates, but the woman looks official. Her uniform is impeccable, not some cheap, jokey costume, and it doesn’t look like she is going anywhere. She makes a small nod and waves the woman in.
“Cup of tea?” Hannah offers, out of habit and to calm her own nerves. When she’s stressed, she tends to babble, get herself busy, play with her hair. And stressed she is, as anyone would be when someone knocks on your door unannounced, clearly on some sort of official business.
“I’m all right for tea, ma’am, thank you,” says the woman following her round the stairs and into the kitchen, “Lots to do today, you see.” The officer puts her briefcase on the tiled kitchen floor.
Hannah shrugs and pulls up a chair, inviting the officer to sit down, and the woman does so, taking her hat off and putting in in her lap. Hannah sits opposite her, still puzzled. She gets up again to make herself a cuppa. Nerves. She has to keep herself occupied.
“So, can you explain what this is about?,” she says, pouring water in the kettle, “I… I don’t think I’ve heard of… hum… HMAO, was it?”
The woman, Officer Patterson, nods: “Of course. Let me…” she reaches for the briefcase and puts it on the kitchen table. She unlocks it and the latches spring up with a clack that startles Hannah.
Patterson takes a folder out of the briefcase, one of about ten, as far as Hannah can see. The woman pulls a single, official-looking form out of that folder. She looks up at Hannah and says, “The Adultery Office has been made aware that for a period of approximately two months between April and June of this year you have been engaging in sexual activities with a…” She checks her form again, “a Mr Foreswith, first name Christopher?”
“I, hum, I…” Hannah stammers, blushing. The kettle boils, the sound of the bubbles a good representation of her noisy thoughts.
“Which is to say, not with your husband, Mr Ross, yes?” The Officer continues.
“Well I…” Hannah tries again, her mind gone blank, words struggling to reach her mouth. The kettle clicks.
“As I’m sure you are aware,” the woman continues, “this was against the terms of your marriage license.” Her tone is even and to the point, but there is an edge to the words that Hannah finds chilling.
“The… terms…?” Hannah asks, hesitant, while absent-mindedly pouring the boiling water in her mug where a teabag is waiting.
Patterson’s gaze pierces Hannah. “To be faithful, loving, and loyal, in sickness and in health, et caetara. You did read the forms before signing them, yes?”
Hannah bites her lip, adding a dash of milk to her tea, “Well it was my wedding day and… I’m sorry, why are you here exactly? I’m not sure how me having, hum, an affair, is a concern to the government…?”
She stirs the milk in, taps her spoon —clink, clink— against the mug, and puts the spoon down in the sink. The other woman, Patterson, waits for her to be ready.
Finally, Hannah sits down with her steaming cup of tea and wraps her hands around it. It is not cold in her house by any means but the warmth is comforting nonetheless.
“Oh it is a great concern, ma’am, it really is,” the Officer says with a firm nod, “His Majesty’s government is of the mind that the moral fibre of the country matters, you see. The French might be happy with their ménages à trois all over the shop, but this is England; there are standards.”
“I-I see…” says Hannah, even though she doesn’t see at all what the woman is getting at. The French have clearly offended Officer Patterson, and she wonders if there is a story there, but that doesn’t really relate to her, now, does it?
The Officer ignores her and continues, “Therefore, under the powers given to me by the Adultery Act 2004, I’m here to administer your punishment, Mrs Ross.”
“I’m sorry, what? A punishment?” Hannah says, startled. She blushes more than she thought possible.
“The spanking, yes?” Patterson says, an eyebrow raised. This all seems routine to her, the situation, the embarrassment, the questions.
“A sp— wait, wait, wait… You can’t be serious?!” Hannah asks as the realisation of what Officer Patterson is saying hits her properly.
The Officer sighs. “I see what’s happening here. I really wish people would read the fine prints… Ma’am, it’s all in the marriage license, under section 5, paragraphs 3 through 7, ‘consequences for infractions’.”
“I’m not going to get a spanking!” Hannah says, and she believes her tone is firm. The tremor in her voice is evident to Patterson, however. She has heard it all before.
“Listen, ma’am,” Patterson says, putting both hands flat on the table, “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, it’s in your best interest to come over my knees today and be done with it.”
“Absolutely not!” Hannah says, crossing her arms.
Patterson shrugs, “Then I’m afraid it will have to be escalated from a hand-and-hairbrush jobbie to a full-on caning at the station. You don’t want that, ma’am Ross. The Sarge, he’s got quite the heavy hand.”
“But… You can’t do this…” Hannah says, cracks already showing in her resolve. A caning? A sergeant? This does not sound good at all. But neither does anything this woman would do to her.
“Did you cheat on your husband, Mrs Ross?” Patterson asks, surprisingly gentle.
Hannah sighs, then nods coyly “Y-yes…”
“There are consequences for that, ma’am,” the Officer says, and Hannah cannot find fault in that simplest of arguments. Or course cheating is bad, of course she feels bad about it, but still, that’s none of the government’s business!
Hannah plays with her hair —again, nerves, fidget—, “But… A spanking, really? I will pay a fine! Or community service? I’ll do anything but that!”
“I’m afraid it has to be corporal punishment, ma’am,” the Officer says, as she has done dozens of times before, an argument well rehearsed, “Punishment must fit the crime, and all that.”
“Please?,” Hannah begs, “Could you give me a pass? Just a warning ? I’ve got money here, I could…”
Patterson crosses her arms, seemingly outraged, “Surely you are not trying to bribe an Officer, ma’am? There would be serious consequences for that…”
“N-no, no, of course, not at all…” Hannah stammers. The consequences seem severe enough as they are.
“Good, excellent,” says the Officer getting up, “Shall we then? In the lounge is best, usually. Although you might want to pull the curtains…”
“I… Will… will Harry— will my husband know about this?” Hannah asks, her eyes on the floor, resigned.
“We won’t notify him, if that’s what you want to know,” Patterson says, “We prefer to deal with the guilty parties directly… There isn’t much point in bringing awareness or pain to the victims. We do want your marriage to improve and flourish, Mrs Ross. Hopefully, this will be a first step! However, he might notice the aftermath, if you know what I mean.”
“Right…” Hannah sighs.
“The lounge, then?” Patterson says, getting up.
“This way…” Hannah offers in a whisper.
“Lush!” says her would-be tormentor.
It’s not lush at all, Hannah thinks, not one bit. The cup of tea still sits, untouched, on the kitchen table as they make their way to the small, but cosy, living-room.
Hannah pulls the curtains shut, and starts rearranging the cushions on the sofa, then wonders what the hell she is doing, and stops. She turns to the uniformed woman, who is looking at a bookshelf with feigned interest. She is carrying her briefcase, and Hannah has no doubt that there are sundry instruments of torture hidden in it. Whips, paddles, crops and the like! She can imagine Patterson dressed in the leathers of a cliché dominatrix. A shiver runs up her spine. A spanking…
She takes a deep breath, “So… How does it… Happen?”
It, the spanking, the punishment, the humiliation. She doesn’t want to say it, because that would make it real. And she doesn’t want it to be real. Not even a smidge. More shivers up her spine, and she can feel her lip tremble, tears welling in her eyes. She doesn’t want to cry in front of that woman. She thinks to plead, to beg again, but she knows that Patterson means business. The uniformed cow, she must be enjoying this immensely. Why else would she be doing this job? Spanking innocent people on behalf of the government… Well, not so innocent maybe. The picture of the dominatrix flashes in her mind again. Officer Patterson would look good in leather, she muses for an instant. But still. Cow.
“Oh it’s very simple,” moos Patterson, “I’ll just sit on the sofa and… May I?”
Hannah invites her to with a hand-gesture, and the Officer sits down, her briefcase in front of her. Hannah just stands there in the middle of the room, her hands joined in front of her, eyes on the floor like a scolded schoolgirl. Appropriate, she thinks.
“Next you are going to come over my lap,” the Officer says, tapping said lap, “and I will begin with a warm-up hand-spanking.” She reaches for the briefcase and takes out a hairbrush —a mean-looking little wooden one— and a different form from before, “Then you’ll get the allotted swats with the hairbrush, and I’ll fill-in this form for our records. After that you’ll be free to put all of this behind you.” The briefcase snaps shut. “All clear?”
“When you say ‘allotted swats’…?” Hannah whispers, not daring to look up at the other woman.
“Standard rate is one hundred,” the uniformed woman says, and Hannah head jerks up to look at her.
“One hundred?!” she exclaims, “You can’t be serious…” Her hand fly to her bottom pre-emptively.
“It is meant to prevent reoffending,” Patterson says with a twist of the mouth. She is enjoying this, Hannah thinks. Cow! Bitch, even!
“However,” Patterson carries on, tapping the form, “as you are a first offender, the punishment can be reduced down to seventy-five swats at my discretion… Provided that you do what you are told, to the letter, and without complaint.”
Seventy swats of that evil-looking hairbrush seems awful, but it sounds so much better to Hannah than a hundred that she sighs with relief. Relief! As if it was a gift that Patterson was giving her! She feels powerless, guilty, angry —at Patterson, at herself—, and so, so small. She royally cocked up this whole thing, didn’t she? Harry’s not even a bad husband… She just… Wanted a bit of naughty fun, a bit of novelty… And now…
“I… I’ll be good! I’ll do whatever you say… Ma’am!” she says, awkwardly.
“Miss Patterson will do,” the Officer says.
“Yes, miss Patterson…” says Hannah, and she thinks of the flowery yoga leggings that she is wearing, and how silly she will look, dangling over Patterson’s lap. Should she offer to get changed into something more… serious, she begins to ask herself. Then she catches herself. Is it what she is worried about? Looking silly?
“Then,” Patterson says, oblivious to the internal drama unfolding in Hannah, “let’s get started.” She gestures for Hannah to come over, and she does as she is told, without complaining. Seventy-five, that’s what she has to get through. Then she can forget it. Will she ever forget how she’s feeling right now, as if on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump?
She takes a deep breath and lowers herself onto the Officer’s lap. She feels silly, fidgeting and squirming to find a comfortable position, even if she doubts that comfortable is the word. With her long knitted sweater over her yoga leggings, she might have some protection, but—
Patterson lifts the sweater up to her waist and rubs a hand over her bottom in a circle, once, then pats both cheeks a few times. Hannah squeals with surprise and embarrassment, but soon the pats turn into slaps, and her cries are more of pain than anything else. Patterson, it turns out, has a firm hand, and now that Hannah is over her knees, she clearly hasn’t got time for pleasantries. The slaps come in a crescendo, hitting her left cheek, her right, in quick succession, building up heat, pain. Hannah squirms, hears her breath become heavier. She balls her fists, bites her lip. Her bottom sways left and right with each slap, and she clenches between them to try and dull the pain. She knows that it’s just getting started, but she wants it to stop.
She moans when Patterson delivers a slap stronger than any previous ones. Tears are rolling down her face. She squirms some more, as more slaps become more forceful. And this is just her hand? How is she supposed to… She thinks of protesting, then thinks seventy-five, seventy-five, seventy-five… She doesn’t know how she is going to last until the brush even comes into play.
“There!” Patterson says, a large slap punctuating her pronouncement. “Now, let’s see what we have here…”
Before it happens, Hannah knows what is coming. She knows her bottom is going to be bared, exposed to that woman, that officer, that cow… She closes her eyes, feeling the Officer gripping the fabric of her leggings, pulling them down. She feels her knickers going down with her leggings, and the cooler air against her bare, tender skin. She shivers with shame.
“No, no, no, no…” she whispers, but does nothing to stop the inevitable.
The leggings and knickers end up at mid-thighs, and she presses them together to try and preserve any semblance of dignity. As if, she thinks. More slaps fall down, sharper now that her bottom is exposed. The sting is made worse by the thought of the Officer’s gaze on her naked behind. She imagines Patterson inspecting her bottom, that she reckons is bright red already. It certainly feels on fire. She wonders what the Officer thinks of her round, heart-shaped bottom. Does she like what she sees? She thinks of her husband caressing it. Harry always said he liked her bum. She wonders if he would like to see her like this. Would he spank her if she asked? She thinks of his smile, his hands. She thinks of his perfume, of his stupid jokes. She thinks of his cooking, his dancing, his favourite cocktail, and she thinks of his dirty socks on a chair, the seat of the toilets left up, and the half-empty mugs of coffee left around the house. She weighs them against each other and thinks of all that they have built together. She has it good. The sweet little routines they have, the flowers on Saturdays, the date-nights on Monday, the pint at the local on Friday… She thought it got stale. As sweet as it is, routine can be… Well, boring. But of course she loves him. She wants him here right now. She wants him to take her in his arms and tell her it’s all going to be okay. She wants him to rub her bottom and make her feel better. And then… She thinks of Christopher. Fuck. She hates herself. She does deserve this, she deserves it all.
There is a pause in the barrage of hard slaps. Hannah lets out a long sigh, and sniffles.
“Miss Patterson?” she asks, her voice shaking.
“Yes ma’am Ross?” the Officer says, grabbing the hairbrush.
“P-please punish me… I.. I deserve it…” Hannah says, and breaks down in tears before the brush even touches her bare, guilty bottom.
Seventy-five swats later —and not one more—, she hasn’t said another word. But in her head, after each one, she has said ‘I’m sorry, Harry’. When the onslaught of pain stops, she lays on Patterson’s lap for a while, sobbing.
“Mrs Ross?” the Officer says, softly.
Hannah sniffles “Y-yes?”
“Let’s get you to the corner while I fill the form, shall we?” the woman says, with a few rubs on Hannah’s bottom that make her wince at first, then push into the Officer’s hand as the circles soothe her burning pain. Hannah nods and gets up, then lets herself be guided to the corner of the room, by the bookshelf. Without being instructed to, she crosses her arms behind her back. Her head rests against the wall, and she feels lighter than she has in a long, long time.
She hears the scritch-scritch of Patterson’s pen filling the form, then the clack of the briefcase opening and closing. She hears the Officer get up and flatten her uniform. She feels a soft touch on her shoulder and turns around with another sniffle. She keeps her hands behind her back. To her surprise, Patterson gives her a little hug, woman to woman, rather than punisher to punished. Letting her go, the officer gives her a quick nod. “Have a good life, Mrs Ross,” she says, “and I hope we will never meet again!”
***
Closing the door behind her, Patterson leaves the house. Hannah is still in the living-room, in the corner, her crimson bottom on display. Patterson wonders if the husband will find her like that. Would he add to the punishment, she wonders? It is not for her to know.
It is late autumn, and the sun hangs low in the sky already. She has other visits to do today, but she takes a minute to bask in the warm sunlight. Another job well done, she thinks, another step towards a brighter future for her country. With a happy sigh, she hums God Save the King as she walks down the street. Unbeknownst to her, a woman sat in a car opposite takes a picture of her, and scribbles a note.
“You’re going down, Patterson…” the woman in the car thinks to herself, and she drives away.
