The tuckshop thief
Original Fiction – for adult eyes only
I stand in front of the headmaster’s desk,
head slightly bowed, arms straight by my sides like a soldier on parade. The
buttons on my blazer are done up and my tie is tightly knotted so that it
almost chokes me. I have made a proper effort with my appearance.
The study is dark, it is designed to be
formal, gloomy even. The walls are oak panelled, a bookcase with glass front
runs along one wall. The desk where the headmaster sits and jaws me is walnut.
Behind me is a low table of some dark wood. I know nothing about wood or trees
so am unable to identify them further. To one side of the room is a black
leather armchair. In front of the desk but to one side are two heavy
straight-backed chairs, presumably for visitors. They are so huge I suspect it
would take two people to move one. In a corner behind me is another low table, also
heavy and dark.
I have been at the school seven years but
this is the first time I have been in the headmaster’s study. There has never
been reason to visit; until today.
It isn’t so much a ‘visit’ as a summons.
The message I received through the head of sixth-form was that the headmaster
‘wished’ to see me. It wasn’t a request it was a summons. The head of
sixth-form did not say why I was wanted; he didn’t need to, I already knew.
I stand not moving. The headmaster is
detailing my faults. He shakes his head in despair. He cannot believe that it is
me standing before him. Me with my history of good scholarship and my success
in the rugby and cricket teams. Never top of the class, never captain of the
team but a good contributor none the less. A good egg all round. And now this.
He drones on and I switch off. I don’t
want to hear him. I realise that I have no feeling. I suppose I should feel
shame. I have certainly done wrong. Perhaps I should feel fear, it is unlikely
that this visit will end well for me.
‘A senior boy …’ the headmaster intones
and his three chins wobble as he shakes his head in dismay. He lapses into
silence unable (or unwilling) to finish the sentence. After a while he takes a
deep gulp and continues with his speech. ‘Never before have I come across …’ I
switch off again.
I know the story I don’t need him to
remind me of it. I am a senior boy, a prefect no less, and for most of this
school year I have been running the tuck shop. It’s not much, mostly chocolate
bars and bottles of pop. It is open during morning break and at lunchtime. It’s
popular with the younger boys who are forbidden by school rules to leave the
premises. Many sixpences and shillings pass over the counter. And there’s the
rub. A certain number of those coins have found there way into my trouser
pocket. Great sums of money are not involved but over the course of a week I
make a tidy sum.
I suppose it was inevitable that I’d be
found out eventually. Stocks of chocolate and pop need to need to be
replenished and the money from takings is used to buy more. It didn’t take much
of an investigation to find a trail to me.
Why did I take the money? I didn’t need
it. I am not from a destitute family, there is no starving widowed mother and
siblings at home. In fact, my father is a doctor and my mother active in the
local charity scene. I get pocket money and have a Saturday job in a shoe shop
in town.
The headmaster drones on. He talks about ‘responsibility’
and ‘letting the side down’. What he doesn’t do I call me a ‘thief’, although
undoubtedly that is what I am. I have stolen money from the tuck shop. I have
been found out and I have admitted my guilt. To call me a thief would mean my
undoubted crime would have to be reported to the police. There would be court
trial, a report in the local newspaper. The school reputation would be publicly
tarnished: that must not be allowed to happen. The headmaster will deal with
the matter internally. He will brush it under the carpet.
I feel no guilt. I feel no shame. What
exactly do I feel? I feel bored. I am eighteen years old and have been at the
school since I was eleven. Shortly I’ll take my exams and probably go off to
university somewhere. That is my destiny. It is what the school expects and it
is what my father expects. Thinking of father, I am relieved that (so far at
least) the headmaster has not informed my parents. I do not want them to know.
I do not fear punishment. Father has never touched me in his life. No slipper
or leather belt has crossed my buttocks (even though some of our neighbours
might say that is a mistake). All I get is a silent sullen treatment. Things
left unsaid.
The same cannot be said about the
headmaster who continues to wheeze about my misbehaviour and the deep
disappointment he feels. The weight of the world seems to be on his shoulders.
Suddenly I am aware of an awkward silence. Has the headmaster asked me a
question? Is this where I show contrition? Say I’m ashamed. ‘Well ….’ The
headmaster prompts and I mumble a few words about being sorry, although I’m
not. I’m not sorry, but nor am I glad. I am nothing. I don’t feel a thing. I
don’t care.
‘Pah…!’ the headmaster exclaims. Perhaps I
haven’t shown myself to be sorry enough. What does he expect? Am I supposed to
get down on hands and knees and beg forgiveness? The headmaster grimaces and
placing the palms of his hands on the desk top he hauls his great weight to a
standing position. He steadies himself before embarking on the journey from
behind his desk. He takes Pidgeon steps and wobbles around his desk so he now
stands beside me. He is about my height but at least twice my size in girth. He
wears a heavy suit over which he has the traditional schoolmaster’s gown. It is
a mild summer’s afternoon and sweat glistens on his pudgy neck. I raise my head
so I can watch him wobble across the room. He heads for the dark wooden
cupboard. He pauses, steadies himself once more before plunging his right hand
into his trouser pocket. I watch as he pulls out a ring of keys and slowly,
carefully sorts through them until he finds the one he wants. He inserts it
into the lock of the cupboard and turns it slowly. The door creaks open an inch
or so and he inserts his fingers to open it more fully. I can’t see the
contents from where I stand but once he puts his arm inside the cupboard I hear
a distinct rattling sound. Moments later he withdraws the arm and he is holding
a long dense cane.
He turns and faces me. He peers at the
cane in his hand as if he has never seen it before. It is certainly the first
cane I have ever seen. We are a traditional school and this is 1964 and
corporal punishment is widely used but at least at this school canings are
delivered behind closed doors. Not for us the sight of masters carrying canes under
their arms as they walk along corridors or canes dangling from blackboards or
in other ways on open display in classrooms.
The headmaster flexes the cane between his
hand and then absentmindedly swishes it through the air. It makes a terrific
swoosh as it flies. I watch impassively as he does this. His intention is
obvious. Should I be fearful? He is going to cane me. Me, an eighteen-year-old
prefect. Should I begin a protest, say I’m too old for this and such like.
Perhaps I should. I don’t debate the point with myself. I know instinctively
that I am going to do whatever the headmaster demands.
He points the cane at one of the heavy wooden
straight-backed chairs. ‘Turn that around,’ he orders. He wants me to move it so
that the seat is facing away from the desk and towards me. I do as instructed.
The chair isn’t as heavy as I’d anticipated and I soon have it in position. The
headmaster points his cane again, this time at his desk. ‘Take off your blazer
and put it there.’ I do so.
I feel nothing. No fear, shame, nothing.
It is as if I am experiencing an out of body experience. This is not happening
to me; it is happening to some other schoolboy. Someone else is an exposed
thief who has been summoned to the headmaster’s study and is now to be thrashed
for his troubles.
The cane points again. ‘Stand there.’ I
shuffle to the chair and stand facing the seat. The cane taps the chair, ‘Bend
over.’ I hesitate unsure exactly how I am expected to present my body for
punishment. I stoop forward and place the palm of my hands against the wooden
seat. ‘Not like that!’ the headmaster’s tolerance threshold is low. ‘Hold the
side, arch your back, stick your bottom out, feet apart.’ There is a lot to do
for such a simple manoeuvre as bending over a chair.
At last, I am in a position that satisfies
the headmaster. I am unsure where I am supposed to look. Do I stare down at the
dark wooden seat. I could conceivably hold my head up and look across the room
at the wall behind the headmaster’s desk. I choose to do neither and I shut my
eyes tight blocking out everything.
Although I cannot see, I still can hear.
Creaking floorboards alert me that the headmaster is taking up position behind
me and slightly to my left. His wheezes also give away his position. He is
close enough that I smell a combination of sweat, cigarettes, and something
that I can’t immediately identify but later remember is the scent of coal tar
soap, a product that my own grandfather uses.
‘Steady,’ the headmaster commands as he
lays the cane across the seat of my trousers. For the first time I think how vulnerable
I am. There is just me and the headmaster, me a fit eighteen-year-old and him
an aged ball of flab. In any other situation I would be his superior and if
need be I could swat him away with one punch of my fist. But this isn’t any
other situation. This is a grammar school in England in the 1960s and we are in
the headmaster’s study and he is in charge. He has power, I have none. If he
chooses to beat me I have no choice but to let him. A barrack room lawyer might
say I could refuse to bend and indeed I could. If I did, my parents would be
informed and as sure as eggs is eggs I’d be suspended and expelled. So much for
my examinations and so much for going to university.
I didn’t think any of this at the time. It
didn’t occur to me not to follow the headmaster’s instructions. He ordered me
to bend over the chair and over the chair I bent.
He tapped the cane across my buttocks. I
could not see myself but I knew my trousers were fitting snugly across my
buttocks. I was a sporty chap and was fit and muscular, my buttocks were meaty
but firm and I must have offered the headmaster a perfect target. ‘Don’t clench
your bottom,” the headmaster growled. I wasn’t aware that I was. If indeed I
was clenching this was a natural defensive position, just my buttocks trying to
protect themselves from the onslaught to come. I wasn’t sure how I could ‘unclench’
my bottom and I wriggled a little as if that would relax my backside. ‘Don’t
wriggle,’ the headmaster scolded. It appeared I could do nothing right in the
headmaster’s estimation.
I settled and felt the headmaster saw his
cane across the very centre of my bottom. Then I felt him take it away, there
was four or five seconds that felt like an eternity to me before a swishing
sound was followed by a resounding thwack! As cane connected with
trouser-covered flesh. There was another pause before I felt the searing pain.
My knees buckled, my shoulders heaved and I struggled to hold onto the chair.
My eyes popped open and I felt an urgent need to cry out. I gulped down the
rush of air that rose from somewhere deep in my stomach. Some instinct told me
I should not make a sound. Somewhere there is a schoolboy rule, you must take
your beating in silence.
My backside was on fire. It’s a cliché to
say so I suppose but I can’t think off any other way to describe it. There was
intense heat burning beneath my underpants. Already I could detect some kind of
welt was forming along the line where the cane landed.
‘Steady,’ the headmaster muttered as if to
himself as he tapped the cane once more, this time maybe an inch below where
the first stroke had landed. He let fly. This hurt even more than the first if
such was possible. Had he pressed a white-hot poker into my flesh. Another
cliché for sure, but there is a reason why clichés are clichés; they are
accurate descriptions. I did a kind of sentry’s dance, marching up and down on
the spot while simultaneously buckling my legs. If the chair had not been heavy
I surely would have lifted it clear off the floor.
After the third stroke landed (an inch
above the first so now I had three magnificent burning stripes running in
parallel across my backside) any pretence at taking my punishment stoically
ended. I howled! There is no other way to describe it. I jumped up, hands
clutching the seat of my trousers and I whooped about like some crazy Red
Indian from a cowboy picture. Tears streamed down my face and I gulped for air.
The headmaster who was himself wheezing
like a broken-down steam engine roared, ‘How dare you! Get back down. I’ve
never seen such a thing. I’ve a good mind to give you extra strokes.’ I
continued to whoop until the headmaster took hold of my left elbow and pulled
me back to the chair. A firm hand around the back of my neck forced me back
face down. ‘Now, stay there and stop behaving like a junior.’
I don’t know if this had been his original
intention or he thought he had better get the caning over before I jumped up
again, the headmaster landed three heavy swipes Bang! Bang! Bang! one after
another in quick succession. I hardly had time to register the agony of one
stroke before the next one landed and doubled, no quadrupled, the agony burning
in my backside.
‘Stand up.’ I didn’t need telling twice. I
don’t remember too much about what happened then until I found myself in the
boys’ bogs with my trousers and pants at my knees and my bottom pointing at a
mirror. I was a mess. Six distinct stripes lit up my bum and radiating from
them were marks that ranged from light- to dark-pink and various shades of red.
Gingerly, with the tip of a figure I traced the welts, my bottom felt a bit
like the corrugated cardboard that was used in packaging.
In time, now much calmer and with my
bottom no longer on fire, but smarting frightfully, I went back to the
sixth-form common room to collect my things. As I hobbled home, my trousers
rubbing against my buttocks with each step, I re-lived the past hour in my
mind. Still I had no shame about stealing the money but there was a deep
embarrassment that I couldn’t withstand a headmaster’s caning without fuss.
Picture
credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
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