The vicious prefect
I could see myself now, a small pale shrimp of a boy
standing just inside the door of this huge room in my pyjamas and bedroom
slippers and brown camel-hair dressing-gown. A single bright electric bulb was
hanging on a flex from the ceiling and all around the walls the black and
yellow football shirts with their sweaty smell filling the room, and the voice,
the clipped, pip-spitting voice was
saying, “So which is it to be this time? Six with the dressing-gown on – or
four with it off?”
I never could bring myself to answer this question. I
would simply stand there staring down at the dirty floor-planks, dizzy with
fear and unable to think of anything except that this other larger boy, would
soon start smashing away at me with his long, thin, white stick, slowly, scientifically,
skilfully, legally, and with apparent relish, and I would bleed. Five hours
earlier, I had failed to get the fire to light in his Study. I had spent my
pocket money on a box of special firelighters and I had held a newspaper across
the chimney opening to make a draught and I had knelt down in front of it and blown
my guts out into the bottom of the grate; but the coals would not burn.
“If you’re too obstinate to answer,” the voice was
saying, “then I’ll have to decide for you.”
I wanted desperately to answer because I knew which
one I had to choose. It’s the first thing you learn when you arrive. Always
keep the dressing-gown on and take the extra strokes. Otherwise you’re almost
certain to get cut. Even three with it on is better than one with it off.
“Take it off then and get into the far corner and touch
your toes. I’m going to give you four.”
Slowly I would take it off and lay it on the ledge
above the boot-lockers. And slowly I would walk over to the far corner, cold and
naked now in my cotton pyjamas, treading softly and seeing everything around me
suddenly very bright and flat and far away, like a magic lantern picture, and
very big, and very unreal, and sort of swimming through the water in my eyes.
“Go on and touch your toes. Tighter – much tighter than that.”
Then he would walk down to the far end of the changing-room
and I would be watching him upside down between my legs and he would disappear
through a doorway that led down two steps into what we called “the
basin-passage”. This was a stone-floored corridor with wash basins along one
wall, and beyond it was the bathroom. When Foxley disappeared I knew he was
walking down to the far end of the basin-passage. Foxley always did that. Then,
in the distance, but echoing loud among the basins and the tiles, I would hear
the noise of his shoes on the stone floor as he started galloping forward, and through my legs I would see him
leaping up the two step into the changing-room and come bounding towards me
with his face thrust forward and the cane held high in the air.
This was the moment when I shut my eyes and waited for
the crack and told myself that whatever happened I must not straighten up.
Anyone who has been properly beaten will tell you that
the real pain does not come until about eight or ten seconds after the stroke.
The stroke itself is merely a loud crack and a sort of blunt thud against your
backside, numbing you completely (I’m told a bullet wound does the same). But
later on, oh my heavens, it feels as if someone is laying a red hot poker right
across your naked buttocks and it is
absolutely impossible to prevent yourself from reaching back and clutching it
with your fingers
Foxley knew all about this time lag, and the slow walk
back over a distance that must altogether have been fifteen yards gave each
stroke plenty of time to reach the peak of its pain before the next one was
delivered.
On the fourth stroke I would inevitably straighten up.
I couldn’t help it. It was an automatic defence reaction from a body that had had
as much as it could stand.
“You flinched,” Foxley would say. “That one doesn’t
count. Go on – down you get.”
The next time I would remember to grip my ankles.
Afterwards he would watch me as I walked over – very
stiff now and holding my backside – to put on my dressing-gown, but I would
always try to keep turned away from him
so he couldn’t see my face. And when I went out, it would be, “Hey, you! Come
back!”
I was in the passage then, and I would stop and turn
and stand in the doorway, waiting.
“Come here. Come on, come back here. Now – haven’t you
forgotten something?”
All I could think of at that moment was the
excruciating burning pain in my behind.
“You strike me as being an impudent and ill-mannered
boy,” he would say, imitating my father’s voice. “Don’t they teach you better
manners than that at this school?”
“Thank . . . you,” I would stammer. “Thank ... you . .
. for the beating.”
And then back up the dark stairs to the dormitory and
it became much better then because it was all over and the pain was going and
the others were clustering round and treating me with a certain rough sympathy
born of having gone through the same thing themselves, many times.
“Hey, Perkins, let's have a look.”
“How many d’you get?”
“Five, wasn’t it? We heard them easily from here.”
“Come on, man. Let’s see the marks.”
I would take down my pyjamas and stand there while
this group of experts solemnly examined the damage.
“Rather far apart, aren’t they? Not quite up to Foxley’s
usual standard.”
“Two of them are close. Actually touching. Look –
these two are beauties!”
“That low one was a rotten shot.”
“Did he go right down the basin-passage to start his
run?”
“You got an extra one for flinching, didn’t you?”
“By golly. Old Foxley’s really got it in for you,
Perkins.”
“Bleeding a bit too. Better wash it, you know.”
Then the door would open and Foxley would be there,
and everyone would scatter and pretend to be doing his teeth or saying his
prayers while I was left standing in the centre of the room with my pants down.
“What’s going on here?” Foxley would say, taking a
quick look at his own handiwork. “You – Perkins! Put your pyjamas on properly
and get into bed.”
Extracted from the short story Galloping
Foxley by Roald Dahl in the collection Someone
Like You (Penguin, 1970).
The story was adapted for the Anglia Television series
Tales
of The Unexpected (see clip below).
Pictures and video credits: Anglia TV.
For
extracts from novels, click here
For more items including Prefects,
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