Chapter Three
Alan was up before dawn getting a work list ready for Rey. His plan was for her to work her end of the deal as independently as was practical, so that he could work on other jobs. The first order of business was to lay out what he knew she could do, and get her started on that list.
When daylight came, and the clock ticked past 7AM with no sign of Rey, Alan felt a small nibble of irritation. When 8 came, and there was still no sign of her, his innate impatience was beginning to rear. The phone line to the Monroe’s was busy when he tried at 8:15. Restless and irritated, Alan made himself start on the first job he’d set up for Rey. Plan B being that he would hand it over if she showed up.
Finally, by 8:30 Alan was able to reach Wanda. She seemed genuinely surprised that Rey was not already at Alan’s. Apparently she’d started out on her bike at 6:40. That was almost two hours to travel a 10-minute stretch of road.
Several years of life on the mainland made Alan’s first reaction to that news one of worry. Wanda dismissed his concern. While she didn’t know what the girl had gotten up to, she was certain there wasn’t anything sinister behind her failure to appear.
“Just give her some time me boyo,” she chuckled to Alan’s concern. “Don’t know what it’ll be, but she’ll have a reason for it I’m sure.”
“Let me know if she turns up back at home will you Wanda?” Alan did his best to hide his impatience from the older woman. “Maybe she’s changed her mind about working here.”
“No, no, no! She’s got her heart set on it boy. You’ll see,” Wanda laughed. She knew Audrey was nervous as bird with a cat nearby at breakfast. She also had an idea it was due to some attraction the girl felt for Alan, more than the prospect of having a job. She guessed Rey had found a way to occupy herself so that she would arrive to Alan’s late on purpose. “Bored indifference was one of those foolish female tactics used to confound men and keep them on their toes,” she thought.
When she hung up the receiver, Wanda smiled gently. “Poor lass,” she said to herself. “I don’t think Alan will put up with that for long. And don’t let your Uncle get wind of it either.”
Rey found her way up the steps onto the wide deep front porch of “The Spray” at twenty to ten.
******
As she rode up to the large old home just before 7 that morning, and saw Alan’s tall dark frame moving around behind the broad kitchen window, she found she couldn’t control her nervous energy.
“I’m too early,” she argued with herself. “He’ll think I’m over eager.” That thinking helped her pass the house, and continue down the bluffs toward town.
The phone conversation the night before, coupled with anticipation of the job, and proximity to the man she found so exciting and made her feel restless. Sleep the night before consisted of anxious dreams that she was being chased on the beach by the truant officer, and then waiting outside the principal’s office at school. The officer had Alan’s face, and so did the principal. The dream was filled with the free-floating anxiety that came with the threat and fear that she was going to get a spanking. Her crime was unnamed in her dream, and the feared consequence never quite happened. She woke up tired, and with a vague sense of frustration and something else she couldn’t name.
Down by the docks, a few straggling lobstermen were launching their Dolly’s. A few of the Dulce harvesters were pulling in too. Watching these two activities gave Rey something to distract herself with for a while. The tide was high again as well, so all of the herring weir fishermen were back in port, having already offloaded their catch from the night before. Rey found a comfortable spot and parked herself nearby where a group of them were having coffee and shooting the breeze. Their banter made her smile at first, but after a while, as the feeling of comfort and rightness and “home” settled in, it was displaced by restlessness.
“I’ll have to leave here soon,” she thought to herself. The thought made her sad, and brought back the nervousness she felt with the prospect of working for, and being near Alan. If she were honest with herself, she would know that she did not want to leave the island, that deep in her heart of hearts; she wanted it to be her home for the rest of her life. But for the moment, she thought her feelings were more related to fear of the unknown, and an inability to decide what she wanted to do. It bothered her that few, if any, of her peers had had any trouble moving off into the world. Most were either in College or University or in jobs.
“HiO lassie!” A crisp clap on the back, and rough gravel voice brought Rey back from her thoughts. “What on earth has you down here on such a fine early mornin’?”
“Hey Roscoe,” Rey startled briefly, and then spoke quietly. The old fisherman was a fixture on the docks at all hours of the day. His age and an injury that left him with one leg shorter than the other kept him “beached.” He was a good friend to Rey, and a few of the other more spirited youth on the island. In fact he probably knew more about Rey’s inner most thoughts and worries than she did. Rey had been coming down to the docks to “think,” and hide from trouble ever since she’d come to Grand Manan.
“You in some kind of pickle lass?” Roscoe spoke through clenched teeth as he took a chunk off a plug off tobacco, and moved around to sit on the piling next to Rey.
“Naw, I’m just killing time before I start a job for the Woodward boy,” Rey shrugged and absently picked at shreds of old rope that clung to rusted spurs on the piling she was using as a perch. When she heard her own voice say “the Woodward boy,” her smile became broader. It was how Alan would be called in conversations in homes all through Seal Cove, but somehow it seemed funny to refer to a man who must be nearly a decade older than she was by a nick like that.
“A job you say? Doing what?” the old man asked with interest.
“He’s going to renovate “The Spray” and open it back up I guess,” Rey shrugged again.
“That so? Now that’s a bit of news I’ll say,” Roscoe coughed and spit. “Late starter is he?”
“Naw, I just don’t want to seem too eager my first day is all,” Rey winked and grinned.
“I see, I see,” Roscoe nodded with his own conspiratorial wink. “Won’t do will it? If he thinks he’s got you by the short hairs.”
“Nope. You know me. Easy come easy go,” Rey shifted her eyes back to the rope shreds and resumed picking at them. She hoped the old man would not call her on that lie. This job really did matter to her, and her stalling had nothing to do with apathy.
“Yes lass I do. I know you like you was me own,” Roscoe stopped there. If Rey had looked up, she would have seen the look of concern and questioning on her old friend’s face. As it was, she sensed it from the tone of his voice.
“How will your Uncle George feel if he gets wind of you going in late your first day?” Roscoe asked after a few moments of silence occupied time between them.
Rey shrugged and looked at her watch.
“Think the boy’ll tattle?” Roscoe pressed.
Rey shrugged again, and went back to worrying the rope shreds.
“Mebe’ I should tattle for him?” Roscoe shifted toward her, and reached over to tap the platen glass of her watch face with his thick yellow nail.
“You wouldn’t dare, you old bastard,” Rey smiled. She knew the old man was teasing, and she also knew he was giving her a gentle push to get moving.
“Mebe’ you don’t want to seem too eager, but mebe’ too you should show some spunk. T’sa sturdy lass who’ll take on a job with heart,” Roscoe patted Rey firmly on the back.
“He’s not a boy really though Roscoe, he’s on the old side of young if you know what I mean,” Rey changed the subject.
“I expect he is, now that you say so. He was about your age when he left us,” Roscoe nodded, tossed his head, and spit out into the water off the dock. “Not too old for the likes of you though ey’ lass?”
“HA!” Rey spat back with just a little too much disdain. “I’m not interested in any men right now.”
Roscoe chuckled and kept his thoughts to himself. He recognized the exaggerated objection for what it was. “L’il Rey had herself a genuine interest in a fella.’”
“It’s coming up on lunch time lass, don’t you think you might be pushing the envelop some?” Roscoe chided.
Rey looked at her watch again and shrugged. “Its 9:20 you old liar. I’ll go when I’m good and ready got it?” As she spoke she stood, and stretched and yawned with the lazy ease of apathy. Feigned as it was, she made a good show of it. “I need a coffee soon any way I may as well go.”
“Hope the man don’t have old fashioned ideeez about punctuality lass,” Roscoe chuckled, coughed and spat.
“Old fashioned ideez?” Rey turned a puzzled look toward the old man.
“In my day a young lass like you shows up late for her first day on the job, she might have found hers’ff going a few rounds with a stout stick or a strip of leather,” Roscoe tossed his head and spit again.
A wave of goose flesh pulsed over Rey’s skin along with an electric surge of energy that pulsed into her groin when Roscoe made his comment. The nervous energy she’d been trying to get a handle on all morning was back full force.
“Yeah well, he better not even think about something like that,” Rey responded quietly with a shrug of her shoulders and a look on her face that betrayed the trepidation she was feeling.
“If he’s a smart man he’ll keep it in mind lassie,” Roscoe laughed. He was enjoying the tease, and his young friend’s uncertainty. All was right with the world in his mind no matter what today brought, all things including minor truancy fit into the plan.
*********
Rey went over her excuses for the hundredth time as she stood outside “The Spray’s” large front door. The sun behind her cast rainbow beams through intricate lead glass into the hallway beyond. Should she knock, or just try the door and walk in? Her hand trembled as she lifted it to the door handle. When her heart started racing with it, she sighed, and turned away from the door.
“He’s gonna be mad if you don’t show up sometime!” she told herself as she punched her fists into the tops of her thighs. “He did say what time to be here in the first place you idiot. Ah, so what!?”
She would claim he had told her to be there bright and early. That she remembered that much from the unsettling phone conversation the night before, but she didn’t recall a time being mentioned. Her excuse would have to fly on the premise that he didn’t mention a time. If he insisted he did, she’d say she didn’t remember it.
“This is stupid! Just go in you idiot,” Rey chided herself, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
She spent the next five minutes pacing the length of the porch firming up her story, and gathering the gumption she’d need to pull off the lie.
Whistling from inside, helped her over the hurdle. A man who whistled while he worked couldn’t be too mad. The door was unlocked, and that answered the question of knocking for her. Rey stepped inside the huge old home, and looked around as she closed the door behind her.
The whistling was coming from a room at the back of the house. Rey thought of following the sound, and getting that first meeting over with, but the desire to snoop around the old home took over. The place had the musty grace of a once well cared for old home. Under the patina of age and the shadows cast by neglect, and dirty windows, was the bones and flesh of a very beautiful Victorian house.
As she stepped into the living room, and moved through it to the dining room, Rey took in the same expansive view of the sea that Alan surveyed the night before. Her thought, that it was a shame the wall between the rooms broke up the picture, mirrored Alan’s. Rey immediately felt at home in the house. She remembered Alan’s indecision about keeping it from that first day in her Uncle’s kitchen. “If this was mine, there’d be no power on earth that could make me give it up,” she spoke to the walls and windows.
Usually those kind of vague feelings of attachment made her restless, and served more to remind her that the clock was ticking on her departure from the island, but this time was different. The house made her relax. “Even if it wasn’t hers, and she’d have to leave it in a few months, while she was in it she was home.” Although she did not articulate those words in her mind, a sense came over her as if those words were instinctive knowledge.
It took her close to thirty minutes to complete her tour of the house, and make her way to the room where Alan was working. When she got there, she took up a bored stance in the doorway, using her posture, and leaning on the frame to punctuate the disinterest. Alan saw her there out of the corner of his eye, but waited a bit before he looked up. He wanted to see what her first move would be.
In the time since he’d spoken to Wanda, and found out Rey left home early, Alan had been giving consideration to how he would address the issue of arrival time. Knowing she started out early, made him wonder why she was so late getting there. The possibility that stayed on the top of the list was that she’d set out to piss him off with a little passive aggressive manipulation.
The haughty air she was putting on clinched that thought as the most likely. As a high school science teacher, Alan had met and dealt with his share of cocky spoiled adolescents.
“All for show too,” he thought to himself. Well, the bored ‘could-care-less’ routine was not going to fly with him. If she wanted to work, then she’d damn well better show it and give up this child’s game. If she didn’t, he’d take the wasted time out of her hide, and find someone who did want to work.
Rey waited for Alan to speak. When he didn’t, she sighed and shifted her hip on the wall, to make sure he heard her there. He turned his face up from the job he was doing, in the corner he was crouched in, and ran his eyes up and down her small frame. The gesture and his cold, hard-as-steel expression, was calculated to unnerve, and it did that.
Rey immediately straightened up into a defensive posture. Her arms crossed protectively over her torso, her fingers worried the seams of her sweater, and the beginnings of a pout twitched around her mouth. “I’m here,” she said. The trace of defiance that remained in her stance and tone of voice was all she could muster from the bravado she’d rehearsed so hard.
“Late,” Alan said, as he turned his attention back to the steamer he was using to lift the old wallpaper. His posture and the edge in his voice made Rey feel dismissed. In fact his tack was so effective her first instinct was to turn and leave.
She didn’t want to leave though. The feeling that she had been dismissed, the nervous energy of the morning, and the aggravation that her attitude now had to shift or she would cut off her own nose out of spite set off her temper.
“You didn’t say what time to be here!” her answer was a retort.
“Pardon me?” Alan turned back, lifting his right eyebrow, his expression more amused than angry, but amazed none the less. Not only had he told her he wanted her there early, he’d warned her what to expect if she was late. He’d made a point of it. Her brazen claim disarmed him briefly.
Rey knew immediately her plan to claim ignorance of the time was hopeless. She should have known it in the first place, but that was beside the point now.
“Nothing,” she said.
“So I’m supposed to just ignore it and let it pass?” Alan asked; as he putt the steamer and scraper down, and pushed himself up to stand using his hands on his knees. The sounds of his joints popping filled the brief silence between them.
Rey gave her next words some thought. The silence restored Alan’s irritation. He waited for her to speak, checking his watch as he did. After 10AM. Three full hours late, with attitude to boot. Alan shook his head.
“Do you want this job or not?” Alan broke the silence, pre-empting the excuses Rey was considering.
Rey’s body responded to the angry edge in his voice before her mind did. Anxiety pulsed through her leaving her hands tingling with the excess energy. Her reaction was to shrug. It was a thing she’d done when she had no words and was uneasy since she was a child. Most of the time she wasn’t even aware of it until the inevitable reaction from authority reared its head.
“You don’t care? Is that it?” Alan’s experience with teenagers taught him enough that he was fairly certain Rey’s indifference was not real. He was going to make her own up to it though. If he was going to have any kind of friendship at all with the little brat, it would be a good idea to retire the arrogant mask she worked so hard to keep up.
“I do so,” Rey objected.
“You could have fooled me,” Alan’s voice was soft, but firm.
“I had some thinking to do,” Rey offered.
“I have a telephone.”
“I wasn’t near a phone,” Rey countered.
“You were supposed to be here. You can do a whole lot of thinking while you strip wall paper too,” Alan pointed out.
“Yeah well I was late. I’m here now. Do you want me to work or not?” Rey answered the surge of aggravation and embarrassment the renewed the tingling in her hands.
“I’ll have to think about that,” Alan’s answer was matter of fact, and strong enough to leave serious doubt in Rey’s mind as to whether she still had a job after all.
Alan pushed past her into the hallway and then into the kitchen. He needed a cup of coffee.
Rey hung back in the hall. “What next?” she thought.
“Come in here and sit down. We have some rules to lay out,” Alan called to her once he got the grounds in the filter and water running through the Braun®.
Reluctantly, Rey followed his voice, and came into the kitchen.
“Sit down over there,” Alan ordered, pointing to the chair by the table that was closest to him. Rey moved past him with her head down, and sat. For the first time it occurred to her that her Uncle George would not be happy at all if she ended up fired before she started. It might be the thing that would make him take a hard line with her about getting serious about her future, something she’d been expecting for a while now.
“Do you want this job?” Alan asked again. This time his voice was hard, and he made it clear he wanted an answer.
“Yes,” Rey obliged quickly.
“Alright then, we’ll have an understanding today, and go forward. Alright?” he asked, his tone still firm.
Rey nodded, but kept her eyes focused on her finger nails and a rough crust of sugar crumbs that were stuck to the table top. She picked and chipped at the crust, making a small white ridge out of the freed sugar.
“Say it,” Alan demanded.
“OK,” Rey obliged, and looked up so that he could see she meant it. Her temper started simmering again.
“Good,” Alan said, and he took a seat on the corner next to her. “First one. We start at 7AM. That one we made clear last night if I recall, didn’t we?”
Rey nodded, and eyed him with suspicion.
“Second one. You answer all questions with words not nods. It starts now. Clear?”
Rey nodded.
“Clear?” Alan repeated, adding an even firmer edge to his voice, and to his expression.
“Yes,” Rey spoke. Irritation bubbled up into her throat.
“Good. Third, you clean up that cocky attitude, and show a genuine interest in what’s doing here. I won’t have a surly brat with a so what attitude slowing down this project. Clear?”
Rey nodded.
“Damned slow on the uptake aren’t you?” Alan snapped. “Or is that your attitude showing?”
“What?” Rey complained.
“I asked you ‘is that clear?’ Did you answer?” Alan’s voice grated over the explanation.
“Oh, sorry. Yes it’s clear,” Rey back tracked.
“Two rules broken already,” Alan sighed. “We’re not getting off to a good start.”
“I said I was sorry,” Rey argued.
“Next rule. No arguing. Clear?”
Rey nodded again.
“Alright, enough. This isn’t going to work,” Alan growled and pushed his chair back to get up and pour himself some of the finished coffee.
“Cut it out! It’s not fair to keep doing that. Don’t keep asking me questions like that when there’s only one answer I can say!” Rey hissed, and pushed her chair back as well.
“I want to hear you say the answers. I told you I want you to loose the ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude. I mean it. You say yes every time I ask a yes question. Is that clear?” Alan turned to face her and raised his voice to emphasize his position.
“Yes!” Rey’s answer was equal in volume, and infused with all of the irritation she was feeling.
“That’s better,” Alan responded to her aggravation with a sly grin, and turned to pour himself some coffee.
“Goddamned prick!” Rey grumbled under her breath.
“What’s that?” Alan stopped what he was doing and turned back to face her. Warning infused his manner. “You’re walking a very thin line if I heard what I think I did.”
“Nothing,” Rey backed her temper down a little.
“We both know it was not nothing, and I’m warning you for the last time about your attitude,” Alan growled. “Is that clear!?”
“Fuck! Yes it’s clear!” Rey slapped her hands on the table and yelled the answer this time.
“Alright, time to have that come to Jesus discussion I warned you about last night,” Alan announced, and then he reached over the counter and lifted a wooden spatula from an old wood cylinder that held several similar tools. He hefted it in his right hand, testing its weight, and then slapped his left palm with it as if testing its sting. As if to confirm it packed enough, he shook his hand, and nodded his head.
“No way!” Rey’s eyes opened wide as an unpleasant surge of electric arousal and realization surged through her. She suddenly felt an urgent need to pee.
“Yes way,” Alan nodded, as if he were confirming that she wanted sugar in her coffee. “It’s a condition of your employment now I’m afraid.”
“It’s not fair!” Rey shook her head no.
This time it was Alan’s turn to shrug. “My house, my job, my rules,” his voice was matter of fact his expression was grim and determined.
Rey watched him as he pulled his chair away from the table, sat on it and looked at her expectantly. She shook her head no. The same confusing mixed feeling’s she’d felt on the beach came back. Of course she didn’t want to be spanked. It would hurt, and it would be intensely humiliating. Deep inside of her though, a part of her that she wasn’t sure she liked, a part that seemed to own a perversely delicious desire, fought her mind for control. It did want to be spanked, especially by this man. It was wondering if he would make her pull her pants down. Fear of it, her own secret self, and fear of pain made Rey’s mouth and throat go dry, and made her head a ‘no’ metronome.
“Yes Audrey,” Alan countered her head. “This is how it’s going to be. Over here now.” He tapped his right thigh with the spatula.
Rey’s expression contorted into a mix of confusion and reticence.
“Come on, we’ve got work to do and you’ve wasted enough of the day,”
“I don’t want to,” Rey objected. “Can’t you give me another chance?”
“Nope, chances give the wrong message.”
Rey shook her head no again, and looked desperately around the room. Confusion and amazement that she was about to get up and submit to a spanking by a stranger made her mind reel. There was no relief for her confusion on the walls and surfaces around her, so she began to wring her hands. The prickling of excess energy and nerves was making her fingers buzz. The sensation was not pleasant.
“Now!” Alan’s voice boomed and startled her. With a whimper, she stood, and moved to his side.
“Take your pants and panties down and lean over,” Alan instructed.
Rey shook her head no again, and tipped her head so her eyes captured his with a look that pleaded with him to change his mind. He was serious, and there was no softening. He tapped his thigh again, and reached to tug on her right arm.
Rey whimpered, and then closed her eyes. With her eyes closed, she could remove herself in a small way from the more unpleasant aspects of her reality. Part of her wanted to run, and part of her reveled in what was about to happen. Her fingers fumbled on the button and fly of her jeans, they came down and she laid herself across his thighs without his help.
“EIY!” she yelped, when Alan brought the spatula down hard for the first spank.
“Looks like you’ve had a sound spanking just recently here brat?” Alan commented. He didn’t expect an answer, and seemed to be satisfied with another nod. He smiled, and wasted no time. Many more spanks followed the first in very short order. In a few minutes, Rey was struggling to get away enough that Alan had to stop and secure his hold on her.
“Please let me up!” Rey begged during the brief interlude.
Alan chuckled. He wasn’t about to stop yet. This spanking was everything he’d thought it would be, and he fully intended to make sure it finished the way he’d planned it would. He was aware of the state of arousal that had developed inside his pants, but that was not his primary purpose with this spanking. Someday maybe, he’d spank a woman with another motive than discipline. This time he had a purpose, and regardless of the physical reactions of his body, he found his mind was not especially distracted. If anything, his ability to keep his mind on his purpose in the face of physical arousal was reassuring.
Audrey took a very hard very serious spanking that morning. She fought crying with everything in her, and just barely succeeded. When Alan did let her up, her attitude had improved. The spanking cleared the air of almost all of her nervous energy. That nasty secret part of her seemed to settle into a self satisfied comfort, while the rest of her was relieved to be able to relax and move past the tension that had lingered since their first meeting.
Alan put her to work stripping wallpaper in the back bedrooms for most of the rest of the day. When it came time to wrap up and think about supper, he took the time he planned to use that morning, to fill her in on his plans, and some of the jobs he hoped she would be able to do on her own.
Rey found herself excited about things, and she went home feeling happy and anticipating tomorrow in a way she could ever remember feeling before. She had her own ideas about some of Alan’s plans, but most of his ideas seemed exactly right. |
