Free Notebooks of the Young Wife by Tara Black Page A

it: J had to stand for Joanna, the young wife. Not only was she writing, there was a larger creation on the agenda than the brief pieces I had seen and it looked as though a London publisher had been contacted. Indeed the MR was readily expanded into the contemporary Martin Roberts, who had printed two of the early items in the collection. It was the first time I had come across the putative title, and I decided that while perversus could be a simple adjective, it would be preferable to read it as a past participle, carrying the implication that the Notebooks were not merely ‘perverse’ but had been ‘pervert ed ’. Aside from these points of translation, one thing was immediately clear: whatever stage the project had actually reached, and in whatever form it survived, we had to unearth it.
    At that point Tamsin returned to say that the housekeeper had changed her story. The visitor Molly recalled was confirmed as having come on a particular errand. She was offering a high price for one of two identical copies of an item from 1810, and Matilda had obtained the blessing of the by then terminally weak earl.
    ‘I’m not very happy about this, but the book checks out. I can’t help feeling the story could well change again.’
    ‘Who was the lady, do you know?’
    ‘Yeah, a Dr Torman and she’d come from Queen Mary’s College. Anyway, that’s it guv, I’d better shoot.’ She got up and moved over to the door.
    ‘Okay. I’ll be one, two more days max. Can you hold the fort till then?’
    ‘Sure thing. See ya.’
    I could look into the academic connection when I was back in town. For the present I was more concerned to locate what there was of the Commentaria and there was an obvious first source to tap for help.
    I went through the Great Hall and out to the back, where I’d been inveigled after the trying encounter with the block. The pantry was much as I’d seen it before, except that this time the glass panes in the door afforded a different view. Cook was in residence, as then, but sans punishment strop, and wrestling, or rather trying to wrestle, the boy into position across her ample lap. I breezed in with a cry of: ‘Oh, here’s the young man I’m looking for, and in trouble again!’
    ‘Nothing but trouble, this one, ever since the Master took him in.’ She gave up the struggle to subdue the unwilling boy and shook her head at me. ‘See that,’ she said, pointing at the smashed pieces of what had been a large earthenware pot. ‘He comes up behind me with a shout and it slips right out of my fingers. Pure devilment, it was.’
    ‘Well, I think you’re quite right, Mrs, er...’
    ‘Beaton, and I’ve been told you’re Dr Greene.’
    ‘Indeed I am.’ It was a novel experience to exchange formalities with a woman whose brawny arms had been only the day before lashing my bare arse for all she was worth. But I’m not usually one to harbour a grudge. ‘And I’m with you on this, Mrs Beaton, that it is definitely a spanking offence. How, I ask myself, can the lad not agree?’ For the first time I looked him in the face; he had seen what was coming and the lips were pursed in wry resignation.
    ‘Well, Dr Greene, what boy does not try to escape a hiding? Now if you were to see fit to lending me your support—’
    ‘Then we shall have him under control in a jiffy.’ By that time Cook had hold of one arm, I took the other and he was down. Then I moved round and took his head in a scissor-grip between my legs while she dragged the trousers down clear of dimpled cheeks. I thought I’d seen all there was to see of over-the-knee events, but what followed was a scorcher. The broad hand was powered by muscles to do it justice, and the arm rose and fell at a pace that had the boy screeching from the outset. As in the popular disciplinary recipe, it was short, very sharp, and the shock of it could be gauged from the decidedly flaccid penis glimpsed when the recipient grabbed for his trousers on