History made in the headmaster’s study

 

Original Fiction – for adult eyes only

Bingley sat in the sixth-form common room while his pal Bradford paced. “Do sit down, you’re making the place untidy,” Bingley remarked from behind the Daily Telegraph. “Leigh will be back as soon as he can.”

Bradford continued pacing. Their friend Leigh was at that very moment enduring an awkward interview in the headmaster’s study. “The chaps all think the new head’s a brute,” Bradford perched his bottom on the edge of a table. “A little too enthusiastic in the use of the cane.”

It was true that Dr Richardson had taken the reins at Brocklehurst Independent Grammar School with something of a reputation. He had been senior housemaster at a middle-sized elite public school in the West Country. He had intensions of turning BIGS (as the school was affectionately known in the town) into something to rival the public schools.

The year might be 1957 but Dr Richardson was thought to be stuck somewhere between the wars in his attitudes. He wanted Latin in the curriculum, rugby played on the sports field and he was a firm advocate of corporal punishment.

“Yes,” Bingley concurred, “But we are seniors. Leigh’s eighteen years old, the headmaster’s hardly likely to have him touching his toes for a bumming.”

Bradford jumped from the table as the door edged open. Leigh hobbled in a little painfully. The tips of his fingers gently patted the seat of his trousers. His jaw was set grim. Obviously, what Bradford had expected, had happened.

“I say, don’t say ...” Bradford couldn’t find the words. “He didn’t .... What happened?”

Leigh grimaced. Could he risk trying to sit? He thought better of that idea and stood resting the palm of his left hand on the table while he surveyed the room. “I can hardly believe it,” he whispered. “The man’s a brute. A beastly brute.”

Bingley and Bradford waited. They knew Leigh liked the spotlight. He would milk the moment for all it was worth. They were prepared to wait. He would tell them in his own time. History had been made that afternoon, of that they were sure.

Leigh waited, enjoying the attention. He all but wiped his forehead with the back of his hand before he spoke, “He jawed me, of course. Had I attended the assembly when he announced that the town was out of bounds for all pupils? I admitted that I had. Why did I think that the rule didn’t apply to me? He didn’t want to know that sixth-formers have always been allowed to roam about whenever they were not in a class. ‘Pah!’ he spat, I promise you he actually said, ‘Pah!’ The man’s unreasonable.

“I told him that at BIGS the seniors are treated like adults, we are trusted to go about our business like mature people. Do you know what he said to that?”

The shaking of heads confirmed that neither of his two chums could fathom what the wretched Dr Richardson had said to that.

“He said,” Leigh continued, “he said, ‘You are not an adult. You are not twenty-one. You are a child and as such you should at all times obey the instructions of your elders.’ He actually said ‘elders and betters’,” Leigh winced. “There was no arguing with him, but you know me, I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.”

Bradford nodded sagely. He knew Leigh thought a lot of himself, he wouldn’t let the headmaster off the hook easily. But look where it had landed him.

“I started to tell him what old Jankers let us do but he cut me off. ‘I do not wish to know about the previous headmaster.’ The pompous old twit. Then he asked me again if I had been at that beastly assembly and when I told him I had, that’s when he got really shirty. ‘So,’ he says, ‘not only have you broken a school rule you have deliberately disobeyed your headmaster’.”

Bingley shook his head, “Oh, I say, that’s a bit thick isn’t it. He’s got you on two charges now, for the same thing. That’s not fair.”

“No point telling him that,” Leigh patted his backside ruefully, “He only had one thing on his mind. I was a gonner,” he smiled weakly. “That was it as far as he was concerned, nothing more to say. He waddled across the study. Have you noticed how he walks like a duck? There’s a tall, thin cupboard in the corner and no prizes for guessing what he keeps in there.” He paused hoping to create a dramatic effect before continuing. “I can’t see what’s inside because he’s standing in the way but judging by the rattling I heard he keeps quite a collection in there. Something for every occasion,” Leigh rubbed his bottom a little theatrically.

“He turns to me and he’s got this massive cane in his hands. Four feet long, probably, and as thick as a finger,” Leigh let that thought sink in, “Massive,” he repeated, “Not like those reeds that Jankers used to tickle backsides with. Swish! he flexed it between his hands. It bent easily, even though it was so stout. Swish! He was like something out of a comic. Billy Bunter, that kind of thing.”

Bingley and Bradford exchanged glances. Neither had been on the receiving end of a caning. BIGS hadn’t been that type of school. The old head had used it, but only for the most serious offences. You would probably have had to deliberately burn down the school before you got your bottom beaten. Clearly, there was new regime in town and nobody, no matter how senior, was safe.

‘“Bend over and touch your toes’,” Leigh impersonated the headmaster’s husky voice. He pointed to the floor and flexed that goddam cane again. I could not believe it. He was serious. Deadly serious. ‘But, Sir,’ I says, ‘I’m a senior. I’m in the Sixth.’ He looked at me with those piggy eyes and I swear I saw spit dribble from those rubbery lips. ‘Yes,’ he says, eyes now bulging, ‘You are right.’ I thought he had seen sense and I’d get a reprieve. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘You are a Sixth-former so you most certainly should know better. You should set an example to the younger boys.’ Swish! the cane flew through the air. ‘You deserve much more that an ordinary caning. Take down your trousers and underpants and bend over’.”

Bingley and Bradford went quite pale. Bradford’s Adam’s apple throbbed and Bingley’s eyes watered. “No!” he exclaimed, “I don’t believe you. He didn’t say that.”

Leigh nodded his head sagely. “Yes, what a beast! A caning. On the bare.”

“I’ve never heard anything like it,” squawked Bingley, “Is that even legal?”

“You didn’t,” Bradford stuttered, “You didn’t let him do it?”

Leigh stared incredulously, “Oh, what would you have done?”

“Walked out,” Bradford spluttered. “He can’t do that.”

“Ha!” Leigh ejaculated, “That’s easy for you to say. What could I do? Walk out? Then what? Get expelled. The end of school for me. No exams. No university. No career. No life.”

“But, it’s not fair,” Bradford protested lamely.

“On that, dear boy,” Leigh mimicked an upper-class twit, “We are in complete agreement,” he paused, waiting for his audience to settle.

‘“Trousers. Underpants down. Bend over,’ I saw a glimmer of real malevolence in his eye. He was enjoying this. Have you ever had to take your trousers and pants down like that? No, of course you haven’t. It’s not like changing for PE, or even going into the showers with the other chaps after games. This was me and the headmaster. Alone. In the study. Him with a bloody great whippy cane in his fist and me expected to meekly bend over and offer up my bare arse. Could anything be more humiliating?”

Bradford agreed that he could not think of anything. A dry lump in the back of Bingley’s throat prevented any speech. “So, there I am,” Leigh continued warming to his theme, “I thought blow this for a game of soldiers I’ve got no choice but to go through with it.” He shuddered, ‘“Come on boy, I’m waiting.’ He really is a bar steward. Enjoying every moment.”

Bingley cleared his throat and croaked, “S-s-so you did. You took down your trousers,” and then he spluttered, “and your underpants.”

“All the way, dear boy,” Leigh said with a confidence he had not felt while in the headmaster’s study. “Trousers, Y-fronts, down at the ankles.” Perspiration began to dampen the back of Bingley’s neck as the image played inside his head. “Then I bent over and touched the toes,” Leigh confirmed. In fact touching ones toes to receive a caning is not an easy position to achieve. And like many schoolboys before him when commanded to take up such a stance, Leigh had to settle for holding his shins. Even so, this presented Dr Richardson with an ample target.

Leigh fell silent. The combination of humiliation and terror he had felt at that moment might live with him forever. There he was, eighteen years old, a senior boy at the school forced to lower both his trousers and underpants and to bend over to display his bare bottom to an old man who was determined to flog a long, thick whippy rattan cane across his naked buttocks with the intent of causing him intense agony. In the nights that followed Leigh would relive this in frightful dreams but he would never dare admit that to his pals.

“So,” he lied, “I offered the brute my bare bottom. ‘Go on, I told him, ‘Do your worst. You brute’.”

“You said no such thing!” Bradford roared with laughter and adopted the whiny voice of a snotty-nosed first former, “You said, ‘No please sir, please sir, don’t hit me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise’.”

Leigh flushed. His pal might think that he was joking but he was not far off the mark. “Okay, I didn’t say that, but that’s what I thought. ‘Just get on with it old man’.” He offered a weak smile, “And he did.” Silence followed. Bingley’s shirt collar was soaked and his temples throbbed as he imagined the scene in the study. Leigh bent over submissively, trousers and pants at his ankles and his bare bottom jutting out. He saw it clearly; the schoolboy and the headmaster. Only in this picture Leigh was the boy and he, Bingley, was the master flexing and swishing the cane, before gently tap-tap-tapping it across the centre of his pal’s fleshy bottom, prior to lifting it high above shoulder height and returning it crashing across the naked cheeks.

Bradford broke the silence. “How many? Did it hurt?” Leigh snorted, “Did it hurt?” he asked contemptuously, “What do you think?” Tears pricked the back of his eyes. “Six real stingers. On the bare. No boy at St BIGS has ever had a bumming like that!” His genuine anger unsettled Bradford who offered a weak, “S-s-sorry” by way of apology. “Six!” Leigh snapped, “There’s a reason they call it six-of-the-best. He damn well took my backside off. The brute!” He pointed a finger at Bradford scornfully, “Do you want to see?” He made a half-hearted gesture to unbuckle his belt.

“No, no, no, of course not,” Bradford rushed to assure his pal, his own face flushed by embarrassment. Leigh pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and as he dried his face he quickly moved across the room out of the eyesight of his two pals.

“I’ll not sit down for a fortnight,” Leigh grumbled as he rubbed the back of his trousers. “Ouch, ouch, ouch, yaroooo!” he added in imitation of the comic character Billy Bunter. “I’d better go. It’s late I don’t want my mother asking awkward questions when I get home.”

As the three pals left the common room, in a study along the passageway Dr Richardson swished his rattan cane and took aim at the third set of buttocks that afternoon.

Picture credit: Sting Pictures

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