Philip skips detention

 

Original Fiction – for adult eyes only

It was Friday, the end of the week and the school was almost empty. Philip Jones, 18-years-old and eager to be rid of school for good, was supposed to be in detention with his history master Cromwell Jenkins but Philip had other plans.

He hated Mr. Jenkins, and he hated history. He only stayed on at school because his parents demanded it. It was, Philip reckoned, a complete and utter waste of his time.

And he wasn’t going to spend the next hour writing lines or copying pages from a textbook. He wanted to go home, and watch the television. He checked the coast was clear then ran towards the main gate. He thought he had made it, until he heard a voice behind him.

‘Stop right there, young man!’

He turned around, and saw Mr. Caldicott, the headmaster. He was a tall and thin man, with grey hair and a stern face. He wore a black suit and an academic gown. He looked at Philip with a cold glare.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Jones?’  he asked.

Philip felt a pang of fear and guilt. He knew he was in trouble.

‘I-I was just going home, sir,’ he stammered.

‘Going home? Without my permission? And without attending your detention?’

Mr. Caldicott shook his head in disbelief. Philip might be eighteen years old and a sixth-former at the school but the headmaster treated all the boys as if they were eleven years old.

‘You have been very naughty, Jones. Very naughty indeed.’

He grabbed Philip by the ear, and marched him back to the school building.

‘You’re coming with me, Jones. To my study.’

The study was at the end of a long corridor and the headmaster did not let go of the teenager’s ear until they reached its door. He opened it and with a push to the shoulder he propelled Philip inside.

The study was a large and dark room, with a desk, a bookshelf, a fireplace, and a leather sofa. On one wall there was a portrait of the new Queen, Elizabeth II. Philip was no stranger to the study and was very familiar with a rack with several canes of different sizes and shapes that was on the wall behind the desk.

Mr. Caldicott closed the door behind him, and locked it with a key.

He walked to his desk, and sat down on his chair.

He looked at Philip with an angry expression.

‘Stand there Jones,’ he said, pointing to a spot on the rug in front of his mahogany desk.

Philip obeyed. Despite his familiarity with the headmaster’s study, he felt nervous. He watched as Mr. Caldicott took out a file from his desk drawer and opened it.

He read some papers inside it, rather theatrically turning the pages one after another. Then looked at Philip again.

‘You know why you’re here, Jones?’ he asked.

Philip wasn’t sure if he was expected to answer: the headmaster had just caught him skipping detention. Philip nodded slowly.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said quietly.

‘You have been here before, haven’t you?’ like many headmasters Mr. Caldicott was a bit of a ham actor and he believed he was increasing the tension in the study with his questions.

‘Yes, sir,’ Philip repeated.

Mr. Caldicott sighed as if he carried the troubles of the whole world on his shoulders.

‘You have been here too many times, Jones. Too many times.’

He read some more papers from the file.

‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘You have been here for fighting in the playground, for cheating on your exams, for talking back to your teachers, for skipping your classes, for breaking so many school rules ...’

He paused for a moment, then continued.

‘And now, for smoking in the toilets, and for running away from your detention.’

He closed the file, and put it back in his drawer.

He looked at Philip with disappointment and disgust.

‘You are a bad boy, Jones. A very bad boy.’

Philip was irritated by the headmaster treating him like a little kid.

Mr. Caldicott hauled himself from his chair stood up from his desk, and walked to the rack with the canes.

He picked one of them up, and examined it as if he had never seen it before.

It was a long, thin cane, it looked old and worn out from years of use.

Mr. Caldicott swished it through the air and it made a whistling sound as it flew.

He smiled wickedly.

‘This is my favourite cane,’ he said. ‘I call it Old Faithful.’

He walked back to his desk, and leaned on it.

He pointed the cane at Philip.

‘Do you know what I’m going to do with this cane?’ he asked menacingly.

Philip stood; his hands clenched. Why wouldn’t the Old Man just get on with it. He was enjoying himself far too much.

Mr. Caldicott swished the cane some more, ‘I’m going to beat you with it.’ He rolled the word beat around his mouth.

‘Now boy,’ the headmaster sneered. ‘Stand by that armchair,’ he wobbled the cane at an ancient leather armchair. It was wide with a low back and was the perfect height to accommodate errant schoolboys across its back. With trepidation, Philip shuffled the few steps necessary to take him across the study. This was not his first time, but he never relished a caning. Not like some of his compatriots who would show off their marks to admiring colleagues who might award points out of ten to the masters who delivered the caning. The boys kept an unofficial league table of masters. Unsurprisingly, since he used the cane the most, the headmaster was top in most boy’s estimation.

Mr. Caldicott flexed his cane and tapped it across the apex of the chair. ‘Bend over,’ he intoned, and he watched carefully as Philip folded himself over the chair. ‘Legs apart,’ the headmaster growled. ‘Head low, please. Bottom out more. Thank you.’ He always gave these instructions, even when they were not strictly necessary. It added, he felt, to the ritual of the occasion.

Philip was average height and neither too fat, nor too thin. His grey trousers fitted too snugly; he was soon to leave the school for good and his mother had no intention of wasting money on new trousers that would fit her growing son. Bent as he was across the leather armchair made his trousers cling even more tightly to the contours of his buttocks and thighs. There wasn’t much meat in his bottom, but he nonetheless presented his headmaster with a perfect target.

The headmaster tapped the cane gently across the fleshiest part of the eighteen-year-old’s bottom and ‘sawed’ it gently to and fro. He was taking his time. Philip closed his eyes, held his breath and braced himself for the first stroke. It was another few seconds in coming. The headmaster liked to raise the tension.

Then, suddenly, swoosh and crack! and the cane sank deep into Philip’s proffered backside. He heard the noise before he felt the fire. He grimaced and clenched his fists together. That hurt. That hurt a great deal. Mr. Caldicott was going to live up to his reputation as a master caner.

‘Stay still,’ the headmaster grumbled as Philip’s knees had buckled and his hips swayed. The boy, who was silently proud of his ability to take a Sixer, however hard it was laid on, jutted his bottom out towards the headmaster’s cane. It was as if he were saying, ‘Go on, do your worst. I can take it.’

Mr. Caldicott was in no hurry. Sometimes he let an entire minute elapse between strokes. This gave time for the full impact of the stroke to be felt, and then just as the intense pain was easing into a dull throb, he would land another. That’s precisely what he did this time, landing the cut maybe a half an inch below the first. He had a very good ‘eye’ when caning.

Philip suppressed a groan. He could feel two welts throbbing beneath his underpants and he knew there would already be a raging red stripe maybe an inch wide across the width of both cheeks. He waited while the headmaster took his time lining up stroke number three.

That one landed a little higher than the first and Philip now had three parallel stripes burning deep into his backside. Sweat was running down his back. The study was airless and although it wasn’t especially warm, the heat of the beating was taking a toll.

It took another three minutes to deliver the full six. Six-of-the-best is an overused term but there could be no doubt that any strokes delivered by Mr. Caldicott were of the very best quality.

Philip lay across the back of the chair panting. His heartrate was off the scale and his temples throbbed, but not half as much as his buttocks. He waited patiently for permission to stand. Mr. Caldicot stood back from the chair and took time to drink in the sight of this eighteen-year-old schoolboy with his flushed face and sweat-soaked forehead bending submissively before him. Slowly the headmaster walked across the study and returned the cane to the rack.

Only then, did he turn once more to Philip and say, ‘That’s over with. You may stand.’ Philip slowly raised himself to a standing position. His bum hurt like the fires of hell but he wasn’t going to let the headmaster know that. He desperately wanted to rub away at the pain (even though he knew from sad experience that this didn’t really make a difference.) He needed to go to the boys’ toilets and splash cold water on the wounds.

‘Stand there,’ the headmaster pointed to the spot in front of his desk. He wasn’t ready let for the drama to conclude. There was still the lecture about future conduct to come. Along with words about learning a lesson and taking the experience forward.

Only after all that had been said did the headmaster say, ‘You may leave. Go to Mr Jenkins, tell him I’ve given you six and ask him to give you the detention you missed. I shall check up that this is done,’ he said before waving his hand in the direction of the door which was Philip’s cue to leave.

It was no fun sitting on a hard chair in the classroom for an hour copying out names and addresses from the local telephone book. It confirmed in Philip’s mind that he couldn’t wait to get away from this dump of a school.

Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

SOURCE

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