Rounding up the smokers

 Original Fiction – for adult eyes only

(A St. Francis Independent Grammar School story)

John Allison the new boy in the sixth form at St Francis Grammar School has been made a prefect, a promotion he is beginning to regret.

“Allison.” It was Mr Trout, his housemaster, in search of a prefect. Any prefect would do. “Allison, there you are. I have a mission for you.”

John’s heart sank. A “mission.” That did not sound good. In fact, it sounded very bad indeed.

“I want you to go round up the smokers. We’re having a bit of a purge.”

John Allison did not need to ask for an explanation. Smokers. A purge. Yesterday, Dr Henderson-Smith, the headmaster, had preached on the evil of the weed. He actually called it “weed.” He was too out of touch with his own boys to understand why so many of his charges were barely suppressing giggles.

He meant cigarettes; not marijuana. Smoking was banned. That was nothing new; smoking by pupils had always been banned; but that did not stop boys of all ages secreting themselves in quiet corners of the school grounds to light up the illicit ciggie. John was one of them. He rarely left the house without a slim packet of five Players Weights in his pocket.

What was it, he wondered, about schools and smoking? The way the headmaster droned on and on about it, you would have thought it was the most heinous crime any boy could ever commit; worse even than not wearing your school cap on the way into school.

John had been a smoker for years. His parents knew he smoked, but disapproved. His mother was a born-again non-smoker; she had been on forty-a-day. John rather liked annoying his mother. He and his friends at his old school used to debate about what was the best way to wind up your parents. Smoking was high on the list; so was drinking. But anything to do with sex was guaranteed to trump either of these two vices. One of his friends, Thomas, had gained all their admiration when he arranged to be caught by his mother naked in bed with one of his fellow rugby players. His poor mother would be in therapy for life.

Reluctantly, John trudged off towards the cricket pavilion. There would be smoking third-formers there for sure. There would also be sixth-formers over by the maintenance huts. He knew this for certain because he was often there himself. Oh dear, the sorrowful boy thought, this will end in tears.

Why do they do it? John sniffed the air. He was still some yards off the cricket pav. when he first caught the familiar odour of tobacco. Someone had a cigarette on the go. Surely, they must have known there would be a crackdown on smokers. He slowed his pace to a crawl. Where was the lookout? Who had been put on sentry duty to call “cave” when a prefect was spotted on the prowl? Hopefully, by now the boys would be discarding their cigarettes and heading for the hills.

But no. He turned the corner and almost quite literally fell over two boys huddled over a pornographic magazine, cigarettes dangling from their lips. He nearly laughed out loud. Two fourteen-year-old boys dressed in green-and-gold blazers and mid-grey short trousers with Woodbines in their mouths. The green-and-gold hooped caps worn askew on each of their heads completed the comic effect. They might be committing the biggest crime known to St Francis, but they made sure they still wore their school caps.

“You bastards,” John did not say it aloud, of course, but that was how he felt. “Why did you let me catch you?” If they had made a break for it he could have told the housemaster they were too fast for him and he could not get a clear look at their faces. They, and he, would be off the hook. But, he had caught them red-handed; or red-cigaretted at least. He had no choice; he had to take them in.

John was not in the mood for this. “Put those out. Give me that magazine. Come with me.” He could not even be bothered to take their names.

Three minutes later they were all standing in Mr Trout’s study. “Thank you Allison.” John gave his housemaster a weak smile and made his way to the door.

“No don’t go Allison. I might need your services.”

John halted, startled. Services? What the hell was he talking about now?

James Ratcliffe and Timothy Ingleman stood, hands behind their backs, staring down intently at the slightly worn rug beneath their feet. They might not be the brightest boys in the third-form, but they needed no imagination to guess what their fate would be.

Mr Trout walked the length of his study to a tall thin corner cupboard. He extracted a small key from the pocket of his waistcoat, unlocked the cupboard door and quickly extracted a whippy cane from within. Then, retracing his steps, he laid the cane on the leather top of his walnut desk. The eyes of both boys followed him around the room and rested on the cane. As school canes went it was not spectacular. It was perhaps three feet in length and no longer entirely straight. Years of constant use had made it a little misshapen. It had the traditional curved handle and if you studied it close up you would see that the tip of the business end was frayed. This cane was one of Mr Trout’s favourites. Many of the more junior boys had felt its sting across the seat of their short trousers.

Ignoring the boys, Trout picked up a wooden straight-backed chair and carefully placed it in front of his desk, as if to allow a visitor to sit down. Then, dramatically, he swivelled it round so that the seat faced the boys.

It was a short lecture. Had the boys heard the headmaster’s talk yesterday? Yes, they had. Did they therefore know that smoking was not allowed? Yes, they did.

That was enough. They were guilty as charged. Sentence must be carried out.

For the first time Trout looked carefully at the boys. He knew them already. He taught the miserable pair. And, he had thrashed Ratcliffe before. He never forgot a boy he had beaten. It had been three detentions; the school rule was when a boy clocked up three detentions he won a bonus: six-of-the-best from his housemaster.

The other boy Ingleman, he did not know so well. This would be his first caning.

“Let’s get on with this shall we,” Mr Trout said as if he had genuinely given the wretched boys a choice and that they might reasonably reply, “No, I rather think we should come back another time.”

“Take off your caps and blazers and put them on that armchair.”

John Allison looked on intensely embarrassed. Was he expected to witness the caning? It rather looked that way. He had never seen a cane before and was as transfixed by it as the two boys who were to be on its receiving end. It looked pretty fierce to John, but what would he know. He had no idea that tucked away in Mr Trout’s special cupboard was a selection of longer, thicker, rods that he reserved for the senior boys; even when the occasion warranted it, for sixth-formers.

Ratcliffe, without hesitation, removed the cap from his head and tucked it into his blazer pocket before slipping his arms from the jacket and neatly folding it down onto the armchair. Ingleman was not so self-assured. He could not get his fingers to work. It was as if the buttons on his blazer had been glued into place. Ratcliffe was disrobed and back in his place in front of the walnut desk before his pal had managed to get the second button undone.

“Pah! Come on boy. Don’t dawdle. Afternoon classes start soon.” Mr Trout was losing his patience.

Eventually, with his blazer removed and stored on the armchair, the trembling boy took up his place at the desk.

“Stand in the corner Ingleman. Hands on head. Ratcliffe, bend over the chair. You know how to do it.”

And he did. Soon he had one hand gripping either side of the wooden seat and his small stretched bottom was stuck out behind him, raised slightly.

John had never seen a boy caned before. The swish of the rod as it sped through the air followed by the dull thud as it connected with grey short trousers and the gasp of wind that was expelled at speed through Ratcliffe’s clenched lips, shocked him. He stared intently at Ratcliffe’s face as swish after swish connected with some force on the boy’s buttocks. John had no idea what a beating should be like or whether what he was witnessing was a mild caning or a severe thrashing. But, he could see the fourteen-year-old boy was taking it stoically. Ratcliffe closed his mouth tightly in anticipation of each swipe and as it landed across the centre of his bottom he scrunched up his face to absorb the pain. Then he relaxed slightly, took a deep breath and prepared to receive the next cut.

It was over in two minutes. Six-of-the-best, with each stroke delivered at fifteen second intervals. Mr Trout was a master caner and Ratcliffe a model canee. Both parties had played their part to perfection. The master had delivered a punishment and the boy had taken it. The matter was now closed. Both master and pupil could get on with their lives.

When instructed, Ratcliffe stood. For the first time John noticed the sweat stains under the armpits of the boy’s shirt. His face was flushed red and his eyes shone. The beaten boy was in severe pain; his bum felt like it had been assaulted with a red hot wire; but he was not about to let Trout know it.

“Ingleman; your turn.” Trout swished his cane through empty air impatiently. “Come bend over the chair.”

“Oh, no Sir, please Sir. No!” Ingleman was a deathly white as he backed himself into the corner, trying to escape from the housemaster and his wicked cane. “I’m sorry, I won’t smoke again. Never! Please no.”

Ratcliffe stood and watched in astonishment as his third-form friend curled himself up into a ball and buried his head in his arms. Copious tears were flooding his cheeks. “No, ple-ase, no!” he wailed.

Trout clutching his cane in his right fist strode the length of the study. “Stand up boy and go and bend over that chair.”

Ingleman’s body convulsed and the tears would not cease.

“Doh!” Trout grabbed the boy’s left arm and hauled him to his feet and then dragged him across the study. “Allison, hold him down.” With that Trout pushed the boy face down spread-eagled across the desk, his feet kicking in mid-air.

John was rooted to the spot. He was as pale as Ingleman and almost as upset.

“Pin him down. Now!” The order was barked and so fierce that John lost his senses. On auto-pilot he moved behind the desk and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. He was so strong and the boy so weak there was no chance of escape. John felt the bones in the back of the small thin boy beneath him. From his vantage point he had a perfect bird’s-eye view of the young teenager’s buttocks.

John’s eyes swivelled from housemaster to prostrate boy; from the hand holding the cane, to the stretched backside that seemed no bigger than two pimples that was about to receive it. Then from the cold, steely-blue eyes of authority to the anxious wide-opened stare of the petrified schoolboy. He saw the alignment of the cane with the smooth curvature of the buttocks and watched the upward arc of the cane as it moved to shoulder height. He saw the look of undisguised terror on the face of Ingleman and he saw the swift descent of the cane.

The first stroke cut across the boy’s bottom raising dust from the stretched fabric of his trousers. He did not cry, nor did he yell; he positively shrieked. The wailing sound that echoed around the study sent shudders through John’s body. Ingleman kicked his legs up and down and tried to summon the strength to lift himself free of the desk top, but as if in a trance John pressed his hands into the boys shoulders and he was restrained.

The boy begged to be let off any more, vowed to be good from now on. But it was not to be and the second stroke followed the same relentless path as the first.

John Allison swallowed hard as he caught sight of the stern, impassive look on the housemaster’s face, and the icy coldness of his blue eyes, as he assessed the impact of each stroke and took time to determine which part of Ingleman’s tiny bottom would be the target of the next cut.

Ingleman’s entire body was quaking; his backside was quivering and wobbling; even spasmodically jerking.

By the fourth stroke the small backside was painted with rich and angry stripes across its centre area. The six strokes that Trout lashed into Ingleman’s buttocks were no more severe that those Ratcliffe had received, but by the fifth and sixth strokes the boy was screaming to be let off. Screaming, and writhing and twisting as much as John Allison’s heavy hands would allow.

The beating over, Timothy Ingleman gradually ceased his screaming but continued to sob and bleat. Even that faded away to nothingness until, eventually, an eerie stillness enveloped the room. Only the picture of a beaten boy, stretched across an old wooden desk remained. Mr Trout studied his handiwork and then quietly walked the length of the study, opened the door to his special cupboard and carefully replaced the cane inside.

For what seemed an age nobody spoke and nobody moved. The only noise in the room was the heavy breathing of Timothy Ingleman slumped across the housemaster’s desk.

John Allison was trembling visibly. Drops of perspiration had run down into his eyes, blurring his vision. He found it hard to catch his breath. There was tightness across his chest and a tingling sensation shot up and down his left arm.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” and without waiting for a response from Mr Trout, he dashed through the door.

Outside in the passageway he bent himself double, hands on his knees as desperately he tried to regain his breathing. Huff, huff, huff. He took deep breaths: in, out; in out. His shoulders heaved as he forced great gasps of air into his lungs.

Knowing that young Ingleman would be dismissed from the study at any moment and not wanting to see the poor boy, John Allison staggered down the passageway towards the building’s exit.

Outside in the fresh air, his breathing became more normal. He stood upright, checked the inside pocket of his blazer. Satisfied, he trudged off to the maintenance hut. He desperately needed a cigarette.

Picture credit: Unknown

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