Autumn Scandals

CHAPTER ONE "Not a wholly satisfactory essay, I fear." Professor Gustavus Fielding Porter reached for the blue book on his austere, worm-scarred 18th Century desk. The late August sun burned through the redwood-slatted Venetian blinds. Judy Latimer took the essay book from him as if it were an angry cobra. Her eyes darted to her older sister with a touching desperation. "Too little learning can be a dangerous thing." Helen Latimer patted the girl's tawny mane. "I'll leave you two to get on with specifics." Judy stood outlined against the window, slowly rolling the blue book into a tight tube. Porter escorted her sister out of his study. "Remember, professor," Helen spoke softly as they passed English hunting prints and startling New Guinea masks decorating the hallway. "Judy came through your gate a virgin. She should exit through it equally intact." "Not subtle, but commendably succinct." He paused in the entry way while she plucked his tutorial fee from her purse. Accepting the check, he opened the paneled blond oak front door. Classic California summer heat mantled them as he bowed her out onto the masonry stoop. Helen stood in the probing sunlight, gazing at the tree-dotted Orinda street. Beyond the brick and wrought iron fence, a gunmetal open SEL convertible waited at the curb. A man in his thirties watched them behind blue mirror shades. Porter placed his name as something clerical. Helen had introduced him at a party. Jonathan . . . Parrish . . . Chancery ... no, Vestry; that was it. The woman turned back suddenly, tilting her face upward. Her lips met the professor's in a swift, probing kiss. His English propriety felt deliciously scandalized. Then her cool, brunette beauty retreated down the summer-scorched stone path. Porter studied the tight sway of her posterior and closed his front door reluctantly. He flexed his robust shoulders. He'd been approaching 40 when he'd tutored dear Helen. 1977, 1978-could it have been so long ago? She'd worn her hair longer, then. He'd often compelled her to rubber-band the black locks into a pony tail, heightening the juvenile effect when he made her fetch the tawse or one of his canes before her lesson. She genuflected to set the instrument across his knees as he sat on his battle-worn Ashanti tribe stool. The wide, moon-curving seat rested upon the stylized image of a crocodile devouring a fish. Age and use had given the wood a venerable black patina. She'd sat cross-legged before him as he tutored her in both his bread-and-butter discipline, physics, and his coy mistress, literature. She stumbled less in the precise realms of hard science. Still, a clumsily executed theoretical proof or inattention to detail in researching experiments merited the girl punishment. He wistfully recalled the slap of hard leather against her pale, bare bottom. A forest green sweater framing her round hips ... the wisp of ebony straying between her strained thighs ... the fire-toughened fingers mauling her right cheek as the split-end Scots whipping strap lashed once-twice-thrice! She held her cries until six or seven. He had her choking down grunts thereafter. He punished. She wiped her eyes. The lesson continued, Helen kneeling on the rug, skirt and panties forfeited. Lithe and wild in his arms, she'd responded more vocally to him later. Now, he sighed, salt and pepper dusted his broad mustache. He fringed 50 and some damn fool had called off the s****l Revolution. "Fair?" He rhetorically addressed a four foot tall Sepik River face seamed with incised half-moon designs. The tiny fanged mouth and cowrie shell eyes resembled the homocidal Queen encountered on the croquet fields of Wonderland. "I ask you, sir. Where's the justice in altering the rules while I'm still hot for the game?" He strolled back to his study. Judy had an appealingly fragile aspect in her lace-collared, berry-colored dress. The garment concealed her hip curve and breast swell in its pleats. He remembered his Aunt Lola wearing a similar ankle-length gown as he romped on her lawn, home from Eton for the Long Vacation. Fortunately, dear Auntie Lo had been a cabaret dancer of no small ability before her marriage. She read to him in French from pre-War volumes appetizingly illustrated by Franz von Bayros and the mad, carnal Felicien Rops. The tender association bolstered his professional smile as he gazed fondly at Judy. "Don't worry so. You know the cane only stings a short while." "Two or three days," Judy whispered demurely. Her lustrous gold-chased brown hair hung about her resigned face. "I called it not wholly satisfactory. Yet," he rounded the desk to shut the blinds, "your organization had merit. You showed a clean grasp of Judge Woolsey's decision on Ulysses and of the Orwell terminology." He drew the drapes and clicked on the floor lamp. As shadows changed, the African statuary atop bookcases and shelves seemed to shift about in anticipation. "I thought your main theme diffused, however. The argument spent its energy in cluttered eddies of thought." He hung his coat on a bronze serpent projecting from a Beaux Arts cloak tree. Three straight-handled Malaccas of differing lengths waited in a stick stand. He chose the 28-inch one. A laser-straight British whipping cane, the handle had a cork wrap to enhance grip. The tip thickened percepth at the striking end. "In acknowledgement of your very definite achievement in the essay, I shall permit you to retain your panties." He wrenched the pencil-thin rattan in a tight arc and released it. The wood sprang straight, quivering with leashed fire. Judy timidly placed her twisted essay book on a three-shelf bookcase, an offering before the blind, arrogant majesty of a carven Kuba king. She hiked her mid-calf dress slowly up her bare legs. The pleated cotton furled about her waist. "What a charming color," Porter appreciated as the lowest triangle of her French-cut briefs came into view. "Does it have some coy designer name?" "Uh, Blushed Beige." Judy bunched her dress higher. "How prophetic." He watched the elastic waist band branded JOCKEY appear. "You've had enough toe touching this summer. Let's try an innovation." The cane swept toward a chromed steel tube fixed horizontally between two mighty mahogany bookcases. "You know the bar." Indeed, he'd had her clutching at it, legs and naked cheeks spread for pedagogic effect while the tawse encouraged good scholarship. "Lie on your back, head toward the wall. Make believe you're about to do that bicycle exercise your California gym teachers love so much." The corners of her mouth quivered downward at the indignity. She wiggled onto the floor. Her hips rocked up, the weight going onto her shoulders. Legs waivered in the air till she tucked her ankles under the chromed bar. Her arms thrust flat to the floor, palms down, bracing her body. "Admirable. Can you work yourself just a hair further from the wall, rounding that rump just a significant bit more?" Her spine rippled, wormlike, as she crept that extra inch toward him. Her buttocks tightened, jutting apple-firm, ripe with the temptations of Eden. He could scent the released heat from her body, damply spiced with girl-fear. Her eyes fluttered at him as the cane rose. He whipped the pliant stick downward, feeling it curve in the air. The wood jolted along the length of one single cheek. The impact sang up his arm. The lithe shaft burrowed into panty and taut muscle, down the line of the V-cut leghole. The girl's tremors ran through the cane. He let the punishing sting build, crest. . . . The Malacca flashed up and down again, before she could blink. Her shoulders twisted as the second lancing cut radiated pain. Alas, her solid-colored briefs permitted no joyful sight of the swelling wealage. He concentrated on her panged, inverted squirms. A third whistling stroke landed dead into the meaty curve of her Blush Beige buttock. Her lips bared her teeth as she whimpered. He moved a bit to the right and flogged the other buttock. Three clean, hard licks marched from the center toward the panty edge. He stared down at her. She looked lovely in red-faced distress, the breath hissing between set teeth. "Six for an imperfect essay. Do you remember your first Hue book, in June?" She gave a moist gasp of assent. "A much more painful experience back then, wasn't it? You've improved markedly. You may rise." She uncurled stiffly, each motion of her bottom plainly hurting. Under his tutorial gaze, she got to her feet and lowered her clothes. Her hands batted at wrinkles. She smoothed her disordered hair. "Perhaps we should indulge in a moment before your oral recitation." He gestured toward the door. She nodded gratefully. His eyes followed her panged carriage as she tiptoed away to wee. "Now, Judy, why did Connie dance naked in the rain?" Porter leaned forward in his brass-bound dark oak swivel chair. One hand pressed on his knee to communicate interest. The girl stood before him, her palms gingerly comforting her bottom. She plainly longed to be elsewhere. Yet her eyes glazed and rote memory clicked in faithfully. "According to Dr. Lyman Dean Carter, the dance symbolized the spiritually rich but physically impoverished Rousseauian individual, whom the British Empire had failed to imprison in the meshes of our Western Civilization's techno-pragmatic materialist trappings, and who would soon wed the socially revolutionary vitality-" "Potency," the professor emphasized. "That's a key word in discussions of Lady Chatterley.'' "-potency symbolized by John Thomas in the novel and visible in the contemporary cultural sphere as Gandhi-" "Mohandas Gandhi. Show you know more than the average film-watcher." "-Mohandas Gandhi, whose Satyagraha teachings are represented-" "Embodied," he enunciated firmly. "That's a very fleshy-sounding word and it's important to give corporeal heft to discussions of Lawrence." "-embodied in the text as Lady Jane, the passive maistrye ..." She paused, uncertain of the Chaucerian syllables. "You have the pronunciation. Very good." "... maistrye arising from the natural forces, which absolutely vitiate Clifford, the aristocratic figure of decayed technarchy, but which renew the class-transcending consciousness latent in Mellors' . . . uh . . . peter principle." "Lingam principle." Porter gave a curt nod to encourage her. "Quite good. It's vital to do it all in one, sustained breath so no one can interrupt and seize the floor. Never inhale while stating a thesis or you sacrifice the initiative." He put a second hand on his knee and peered with theatrical intensity at her apprehensive eyes. "But. Never. Ever. Even begin. To let them know. That you refer privately to the central s****l symbols of the novel as 'd**k' and 'Jane.' " "No, sir." She bobbed her head enthusiastically. "I mean it. That's bloody meat waved before academic wolves. This is psycho-social interpretation of great literature based on historical-pastoral-" He caught himself. "Urn, tragical-pastoral . . ." Porter let her see an abashed grin. "Now I'm doing it also. In a real discussion, the pack would swarm over me and rend my living carcass." He cleared his throat dramatically. "A psycho-social interpretation based on the historio-symbolic school of preter-conscious criticism, pioneered by dear Dr. Carter. This is serious stuff, not The National Lampoon." "Please, Professor Porter," Judy quivered at the edge of earnest tears. "I won't ever call Mr. Mellors' pud 'd**k' or 'Peter' again." "Of course you won't." He sighed. "Don't mistake the dangly thing for a p***s, though. Boys have willies. Lawrence dealt in eroto-political art, not glandular fiction. Males in novels-in 'emotiodramatic word scenarios' as the learned Dr. Carter affectionately styles them-male literary figures have lingams. Female counterparts have yonis." He followed the anxious emotions in her face as she gradually comprehended that he wouldn't whip her for the lapse. Actually, Lying Dog Carter's preter-conscious rubbish bored him intensely. Unfortunately, his old Oxford lecture hall mate had established his convoluted analyses as The In Trend, suitable for Feminist Literary Theory as well as for classic, dottering Freudian Patriarchal Models. Porter wished that he could read about Connie Chatterley frolicking jaybird in the drizzle just once more with a proper hard-on, instead of having to summon up Carter's dynamic synthesis of Havelock Ellis and Arnold Toynbee . . . . . . unless he'd combined Henry Spencer Ashbee and H.G. Wells. Porter recalled Lying Dog's fervid babblings about "seminal outpourings of pucilous Eloi" in The Time Machine. Small wonder that he himself had concentrated on adding a physics doctorate after picking off his litterarum baccalaureus.