Gay sex and corporal punishment at an English public school
An Erotic Short Story by Jason Land
EPISODE 1/3
CHAPTER 1
A sharp crack followed, a split second later, by a howl of pain echoed along the corridor, to be followed by a silence of some ten seconds. Then suddenly the crack and howl repeated themselves to be continued at ten second intervals, finally followed by a much longer silence. An attentive listener would have counted no less than nine such cracks before the much longer pause ensued. But then the same regular sequence of nine cracks and howls was repeated for a second time and then, a few minutes later, for a third.
Any public-schoolboy could have told the listener that he had just heard three boys getting their naked arses thrashed; the cracks were produced by well-wielded rattan cane landing firmly across the naked backsides of some unlucky lads, who, bent across a chair, were enduring the time honoured, traditional, and one can but add, effective, public-school punishment of a naked arse beating in retribution for some offence, real or imagined.
The reason that the crack of the cane had been so easily audible was that the Head-Boy of Beckett’s Academy for Boys, in whose study this little drama was taking place, had intentionally left the door slightly ajar, thereby ensuring that all and sundry who happened to be in the immediate vicinity knew that justice – or what passed for it – was being done. But before we go any further into the why’s and wherefore’s of who was on the receiving end of that cane, let us first make the acquaintance of the Head-Boy himself, for it is he who is the, I almost said “hero” of this story.
But that would give quite the wrong impression, for the Head-Boy, a well-set-up and handsomely attractive, young man, was, in fact, in reality a rather nasty piece of goods; one wonders how he had ever attained the exalted position of Head-Boy in what was a small, but nevertheless, extremely good public-school; one in which the rod was never spared and the boys were therefore, never spoiled. But fact is often stranger than fiction and in this case the fact of the matter was that in spite of the short- comings in his character, he did, nevertheless, become Head- Boy.
Sometime in the 1870s, Lavinia Isabel Mainwaring, a social climber if ever there was one, (Oh yes; even in Victorian times, they were plentiful) had married a certain Captain (later Colonel) John Alexander Pratt. On her marriage, she had insisted in maintaining the use of her maiden name, which had what she considered was the mark of upper-class distinction in that it was pronounced, by anyone who knew anything at all, not as it was written, but as Mannering.
As we all know English often displays a very quirky relationship between how words are written and how they are pronounced; but there was really no good reason at all for pronouncing Mainwaring other than as it was written, which was quite clear. But upper-class convention had decreed otherwise; and this to Lavinia was a pearl of distinction beyond price; not to be discarded, as custom demanded, by a simple act of matrimony.
And so, at Lavinia’s instigation or rather, insistence, the happy (?) couple, became known as Captain and Mrs John Alexander Pratt-Mainwaring. So social climbing Lavinia achieved two things in one stroke: firstly, the creation of a double-barrelled surname with that all important hyphen linking the two bits together, which meant that both halves of the name became inseparable; in her eyes at least. And so it would be have been unthinkable to refer to Lavinia simply as Mrs Pratt, which is who she really was.
And on the odd occasion when some ignoramus (her term!) did address her as Mrs Pratt, she simply feigned deafness and ignored him or her completely. But secondly, in creating that first step in the direction of what she perceived as the aristocracy, Lavinia had perpetuated the Mainwaring-Mannering nonsense. So, in modern day language she had most certainly, in her view at least, earned quite a few Brownie points by her absurd manoeuvre.
What Captain Pratt-Mainwaring thought about this, history does not record. In fact, he was bludgeoned into this unusual arrangement by a grindingly relentless Lavinia, who in pretty well everything refused to take no for an answer and usually, with him at least, got her own way. In a word Captain Pratt-Mainwaring was totally henpecked more or less from the moment the ink had dried on their marriage certificate. But it is a black cloud which has no silver lining, and the advantage of what Lavinia had achieved was that she had avoided that unfortunate onomatopoeic consonance between the family name, Pratt and the rather vulgar word, “prat”, which, as we all know, means “a stupid person”.
There are of course other more vulgar meanings of prat which refer to certain aspects of the buttocks, but we need not go there! The one thing that Lavinia truly regretted was that her husband’s Christian names were not hyphenated together in the way the French do with names like Jean-Pierre, for in her affected way, hyphenated or not, she always called him John Alexander and never just John alone. But such are the burdens that men have to bear in the interests of matrimonial harmony. And we have to believe that John Alexander bore them with fortitude; for the Pratt-Mainwarings went on to have two sons together, albeit at an interval of some five years. But then sex, harmony or not, is a great driving force!
The arrival of her first born gave Lavinia a new opportunity to indulge in her fantasy of family aggrandisement, for the new born babe and our future Head-Boy was christened Simon-Sebastian St. John Pratt-Mainwaring. Lavinia achieved her primary goal of having a son whose two first names she had hyphenated, which in turn gave added distinction to the whole name as it now had two double-barrelled components. And, of course, Lavinia never referred to her son other than by both names; she always called him Simon-Sebastian and you could almost hear the hyphen as she said them; his father, meanwhile, just called him Simon; and the domestic staff: Master Simon.
But two double-barrelled names were still not enough for Lavinia, who now added a third Christian name in the form of the non-hyphenated Saint John, written as St. John but pronounced, of course, as anybody who is anybody at all knows, as Sinj’n. So the first born son of this union had the impressive name of Simon-Sebastian St. John Pratt-Mainwaring; pronounced Simon-Sebastian Sinj’n Pratt-Mannering; and to be fair to Lavinia, it has to be admitted that Simon-Sebastian-Sinj’n did roll off the tongue beautifully; not that anyone ever intoned it in full, of course; not even Lavinia.
Curiously when some five years later, a second son was born, Lavinia was content to give him just two names; and with no hyphen! Jonathan Edward Pratt-Mainwaring was Simon-Sebastian’s younger brother. Possibly due to the age difference but also to the temperament of Simon-Sebastian, Jonathan Edward proved a permanent irritation to his elder brother; not to mince words, they did not really get on together.
CHAPTER 2
Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring, as he rapidly became, although at home completely under his wife’s thumb, was by nature, a hectoring, bullying sort of man, who ruled over his regiment with a rod of iron, qualities which his elder son inherited from him. Much to his regret, as a Victorian martinet at heart, but also due to the fact that whip and the cat had been forbidden in the British Army, he had to be satisfied with the cane and occasionally the birch to subdue his young recruits; both of these he saw as being more suited to the thrashing of schoolboys rather than young regular army personnel.
Regular punishment parades were held, usually each Friday evening after supper, when those young recruits aged just eighteen, but were slated for punishment, were made to strip and take a shower, after which they were marched to the gymnasium, where a Petty Officer proceeded to thrash their naked arses according to the charges read out by the adjutant. And let us be clear; when the army, or at least when Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring’s regiment thrashed arse, the poor recipient could not sit down comfortably for several days.
The Petty Officer who actually wielded the cane on these occasions was a very experienced man and by the time he had finished with an offender, his arse was a sight to behold. The cane, always of the finest Malaccan rattan, was made to the army’s own exacting specification and was over three feet in length: rigid but extremely flexible, the rattan cane enabled the beater to position his strokes accurately due to its inherent natural rigidity but then as it mated forcefully (as it always did) with the recipients buttocks, the end wrapped around over his far flanks thereby ensuring that not only his buttocks but also his further flank got a good taste of each cut.
The Petty Officer always started in the classic position used in beatings; standing to the left of his victim, he began by delivering half the number of strokes, usually a minimum of six, for typically a miscreant was never sentenced to less than twelve cuts in all; he then moved to his right side and gave the remaining strokes, thereby ensuring that the poor sod being beaten was left with a totally inflamed pair of buttocks and flanks. And expert as he was with the cane, the Petty Officer, well aware that the most delicate part of any young man’s arse was where the buttocks merged with the upper legs, accordingly saw to it that a good number of cuts landed in that area. In a word, the Petty Officer saw his job as delivering the maximum pain concomitant with the number of strokes allocated. And it has to be said that he usually achieved his objective.
The Petty Officer had also learned early in his career as an army disciplinarian, not to rush any corporal punishment with the cane. So he left a long pause between each stroke, thereby allowing the soldier he was beating to feel the full benefit (a poor choice of word; “effect” would be more appropriate) of each excruciatingly painful cut and to prepare himself for the next. So even a light (!) beating of twelve strokes could take at least three minutes, which is an age when you are stretched naked across a wooden beating horse with the pain in your arse getting steadily worse with each stroke.
And an army beating in the late 1800’s could in no way be compared with those administered to boys in public-schools, where most masters and prefects wielding the cane, generally, but not always, tempered their vigour to avoid drawing blood. In the army no such moderation was exercised; so if a rating got up from a beating with a bleeding arse, as was often the case, he was promptly sent to the camp doctor, who applied a dose of some stinging antiseptic and that was that; no one blinked and eyelid; no one ever complained.
Colonel Pratt-Mannering, approving totally of the use of the cane as he did, would dearly liked to have watched his recruits being beaten each Friday night. Like so many men (most men, I suspect) he was turned on sexually by watching the act of corporal punishment, especially when the recipients were stripped naked and even better if they were well muscled, sexually well-equipped young men. He would also have liked his Petty Officer to be a muscular well developed stud, who did his duty stripped to the waist and wearing a pair of tight fitting breeches to emphasise his masculinity.
In his mind’s eye, he really saw the whole business as a homoerotic scene, where the Petty Officer finally stepped out of his own pants and proceeded to bugger the arse of the victim he had just finished beating. Just thinking about such things gave the Colonel a hard on; but thinking was just as far as it ever got, for it was all fantasy. The Colonel knew full well that he could never ever go to the gymnasium to watch his young recruits being beaten and so he had to content himself with just thinking about things and relying on his personal five fingered lover for solace when Lavinia would not oblige him.
CHAPTER 3
It is difficult for us living at the beginning in the twenty-first century, to realise just how different life was a hundred years ago. Even the most modest of middle-class households had at least one servant. The Pratt-Mainwarings, being fairly wealthy, lived in a largish, detached house and had a butler, a footman, a cook and three maids-of-all-work. Additionally, Lavinia had her own personal lady’s maid and a jobbing gardener came three times a week. But whilst the Colonel deferred to his wife as the dutiful henpecked husband he was, there was one aspect of life in which he did not allow her to meddle: the disciplining of his two sons. If the Colonel felt deprived in his professional life of never being able to participate first hand, even visually, in the punishment of his recruits, this was not the case in his own household.
Before he was sent off to board at his prep-school Simon-Sebastian, to whom, in the self-evident interests of brevity, we will refer to either as Simon or the Head-Boy in this story, was tutored at home by a young lady governess, Alice Roberts, whom, due to the remoteness of his mother, Lavinia, he came to love dearly. In fact, it is safe to say that Alice was the only person whom he really liked in the Pratt-Mainwaring household. Like so many retainers of her type, Alice, in addition to acting as teacher also played the role of surrogate mother to Simon and later to his younger brother.
However, loving as Alice was towards her young charge, she did not manage to change his inherent character. Simon was, like it or leave it, not only a naughty little boy, but also a wilfully malicious one, a fact that by the time he was six, his father had come to realise. And so began what might well be called a long percussive relationship between him and his father, in which the main player was Simon’s arse, which became familiar successively with his father’s hand, then a long handled bath brush and finally a cane. And I can tell you that it did not take Simon, due to his aptitude and dedication to mischief, to graduate from a manual bare-bottom spanking to a full blown bare-arse caning.
Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring was, as you will have already gathered, never one to let misdeeds go unpunished. The first time that he corrected Simon was when, age six, his son had been in the kitchen and kicked the cook on the shin as she would not give him a biscuit or whatever it was he wanted. Master Simon, as he was known, might have been the pet of the household staff, especially the female members; but he had that inbuilt mean streak which set everyone against him. The cook finally felt she had to complain to her master about his son’s behaviour and so it was that six year-old Simon was summoned, for the first time, to his father’s study.
This so called study was a small room which the Colonel held sacrosanct; no one, not even his wife Lavinia, was allowed to enter without his permission; on this he was formal. It was the one place where he could escape and have a quiet smoke and snooze by himself whilst pretending to deal with what, to listen to him, were equivalent to “matters of state”.
Six year-old Simon, slightly nervous as he had never before been summoned formally by his father and had never ever entered this private domain, knocked on the door to receive a gruff command to enter. His father was seated behind a huge desk, totally devoid of any papers; evidently the matters of state had been cleared away to make way for Simon’s visit. The Colonel, who had never been exactly a loving father figure to his son, told him gruffly that his behaviour had been outrageous; one simply did not kick the cook just because she would not give him a biscuit and for that he had to suffer retribution in the form of a sore bottom. The Colonel rose from behind his desk, seated himself on a chair and motioned for Simon to approach.
Simon, who had never experienced any form of corporal punishment until then, refused; so the Colonel stood up, grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck, pulled his pants and underwear down, sat himself down on the chair again and pulled Simon across his knee. Simon was already struggling as the first well aimed smack of his father’s heavy hand landed firmly on his bottom, to be followed by a series of well aimed, stinging slaps. Simon howled at this, his very first patrental spanking, but the Colonel went on regardless of his son’s howls; after some ten painful smacks and with his own hand beginning to smart with the effort, the Colonel decided that his son had had enough and stopped. By this time Simon was in tears, which was not surprising as a firm hand on a six year-old’s tender bum is not something to particularly desirable. But many young mans have endured it from their father and been none the worse for it. Finally told he could leave, Simon rushed tearfully off to find what he hoped would be comfort in the arms of Alice.
CHAPTER 4
And that was how the relationship between father and son started. Simon would be subjected to several other beatings by his father to end with the most monumental thrashing he had ever received apart from in school, when, aged eighteen he was expelled from school. In the intervening years, Simon and later his brother, Jonathan, became regular visitors to their father’s study. Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring, as was the fashion of the age, was never slow to bring either Simon or his younger brother to heel and he let no misdemeanour, however slight, go unpunished.
Both lads, graduated from hand-spankings, through painful encounters with the back of a bath-brush, to full-scale naked arse canings at which the Colonel was an absolute crack. It was probably this intimate experience with corporal punishment at home which was one of the main factors conditioning Simon’s attitude to life and his behaviour towards others: this and his innate mean and sadistic streak.
From the tender age of eight Simon was sent off to Beckett’s Court Preparatory School for Boys as a boarder, to prepare him for the rigours of life at the public-school, Beckett’s Academy for Boys, where his father and grandfather before him had been educated and, I might add, birched and caned quite frequently. But Simon was not there yet, but merely at the first formal stage in his education which was to prove quite a shock to him; as a young man, who had hitherto never been away from home and in terms of corporal punishment had, up to then, experienced such only at his father’s hand, boarding school was a new, unpleasant experience.
Hitherto his only experience of education had been from Alice Roberts; but now all his teachers were men. His Housemaster, a man called Lionel Knight, was a stern man who took no nonsense from any of his charges, who ranged in age from eight to thirteen. All offences were automatically punished and young Simon quickly fell afoul of Mr. Knight, who also happened to teach elementary mathematics.
Simon was caught cheating in his second week at school. It did not seem like anything very serious in his eyes, as all he had done was to copy out the answers to certain problems from his neighbour’s exercise book, which was lying open on his desk. But he had been caught red-handed by Mr Knight, who took a very dim view indeed of his actions.
“Pratt-Mainwaring, how do you expect ever to learn anything if you crib the answers from your neighbour? Gentlemen do not cheat. I will see you in your pyjamas and dressing gown after showers this evening, in my study at eight thirty precisely. Is that clear boy?”
This was the first time Simon had come up against the stern face of authority and he was, justifiably, quite nervous at the thought of what might happen to him. His classmates were of no comfort, as they all said that he was going to get the whack, as they put it; and they were, of course, right.
Now although Simon had already been spanked by his father several times at home, he had not yet reached the stage where the Colonel had taken a rattan cane to his backside. That was something which he would, in the future, suffer at home during the school holidays on several occasions throughout his entire school life as the Colonel with military precision, kept both of his sons on the straight and narrow – as he himself saw it – even when they were not at school.
But his initiation to the doubtful delights of the cane were to come that very evening in his second week at prep-school, at the tender age of aged eight years. Mr Knight, like all his colleagues at the prep-school, believed in nipping all misdemeanours in the bud; and the nipping, if nipping it could be called, was always done with the cane which was applied to the miscreant’s naked backside.
In view of the young ages of the first and second year boys, all the staff of the school, used very light junior canes on their young charges; but use them they did and nevertheless gave the young lads a good bare arse thrashing to set them on the right path towards becoming young gentlemen. The expression “gentlemen” was bandied about all the time as turning out young gentlemen seemed to be the main objective of the school.
To turn out young gentlemen who knew right from wrong, played the game, and held fast to the rules, that was the theory at least and the way that these key objectives were attained was by repeated and vigorous onslaughts on the lads’ naked arses, which for some inexplicable reason was thought by the school as the best path to their brains in such matters of general behaviour.
Simon arrived nervously on time at his Housemaster’s study that evening to find that he was not alone. Two somewhat older boys were already standing there in the corridor in front of the study door. Simon, as a new boy, had no idea of their names.
But one of them said to him: “So squirt, why does dear Sir Lionel, our revered Housemaster, wish to see you? Don’t tell me; you were naughty in class or he caught you looking at someone else’s work and so he decided that your backside needed a good tickle to welcome you to our esteemed school. I’ll bet I’m right; the Noble Knight likes to beat some new boy in the first two weeks of term as an example to everyone; pour encourager les autres, comme disent les français.” He concluded in an execrable French accent.
Although but eight years old, Simon saw that these two older lads knew what was what and so he asked them what was likely to happen to the three of them.
“What is likely to happen to us when we get in there? Well I can tell you that you can drop the word “likely” right now; once we get in there we’re all going to get our arses tanned; and I don’t want to frighten you (which, of course he did!) but I can tell you that from previous experience, when the the Knight beats arse, he really does lay it on: he almost takes the skin of your bum. How many strokes has he said you are going to get?”
Simon naively told his companions that Mr. Knight had not even said that he was going to get a beating; merely that he should present himself at his study. At this the other two lads just laughed at him and told him to get his head out of the sand and face reality.
“Get real boyo, you’re going in there to get your bum roasted and you’d just better believe it.”
At that moment the door opened and Mr Knight appeared.
“Ah, Godfrey and Millet, our two potential prize fighters, whom I caught at it in the playground this morning; you can both come into my study together boys; you were fighting together and I shall punish you together.” And then, seeing Simon standing there he continued: “Ah Pratt-Mannering, I had almost forgotten about you, but happily not quite! Just stay where you are until I have finished with this pair of miscreants and then I shall be delighted to give my entire attention to a certain nether region of your anatomy which is just crying out for some attention.”
To say that Simon’s heart sank on hearing these words would be the understatement of the century. He started to shiver visibly; he could feel his heart beating and he went hot and cold all over. Simon listened intently at the door to try to hear what was happening within. There was a long silence after the two boys had entered and then he heard the first crack through the closed door. This was followed at regular intervals by crack after crack, each accompanied by and ever louder howl from whichever of the two lads was being caned. Simon grew more and more frightened as he heard no less then nine cracks, to be followed by a few minutes of silence.
Then the same thing happened again as the second victim suffered the same fate as Mr. Knight delivered nine resounding cuts of the cane to his backside. Had Simon been more experienced he would have known by the sound of the cracks that the cane was mating with the naked flesh of a lad’s buttocks and not with his trousers. But as he had no experience of the cane he was unaware that his two schoolmates had taken their punishment on the bare, as it is called in such places. And so, Simon had a nasty shock awaiting him as Mr Knight initiated him into the dubious joy of a naked arse beating.
As Simon entered his Housemaster’s study for the first (of many as it turned out to be) time, his blood chilled as he saw laid out on the desk a selection of canes, one of which he had just heard used on the two previous delinquents.
“Pratt-Mainwaring,” began Mr Knight, “I think you are well aware why you are here this evening. I myself caught you cheating in the maths class this morning, copying from another boy’s book. If you continue in that way you will never learn anything and in spite of what you might think to the contrary, you are, among other things, enrolled at this school to be taught a certain number of subjects which will be useful to you throughout your life. But whether you learn or not, cheating is viewed by the school in general, and by me, your Housemaster in particular, as totally unacceptable behaviour, which has to be stamped out as early as possible. And so, Pratt-Mainwaring, this is the moment of retribution for your conduct.”
Simon had said nothing at all, being too afraid to speak, and from the look on his face the Housemaster realised that the boy had no idea what retribution meant and was already trembling with nervousness at the thought of what was about to happen to him.
Mr Knight continued: “Retribution as you are doubtless aware is another word for punishment; so Pratt-Mainwaring, to be quite clear, you are here tonight to be punished for your misdeeds. Make no mistake, boy; cheating is a very serious matter and is always severely punished in this school in the hope that the miscreant, in this case you, will realise the error of his ways and not do the same thing again. So Pratt-Mainwaring, in retribution for cheating in class today, I am afraid I have no alternative but to beat you.”
Simon heard these chilling words and what had been nervousness now turned into cold fear verging on panic. He was going to be beaten with one of those canes he could see lying there on the Housemaster’s desk and there was nothing at all he could do about it.
“Please sir, do I have to be beaten for what I did this morning sir. I truly am very sorry for what I did sir, and I promise, sir, that I will never ever do it again sir; cross my heart and hope to die sir; I really do mean it sir; and sir, I am just so frightened as I have never ever been caned before sir; it would be my first time sir, so couldn’t you please give me some other punishment sir but not the cane sir, and I promise you faithfully sir, that I will never ever do anything like that again sir and I’ll never cheat again sir, honestly I won’t sir and I am really frightened of being caned sir, and how it will hurt me; so please sir not the cane.”
The Housemaster let Simon go rambling on with his repetitious and grammatically challenged plea for mercy, which, of course, had not the slightest effect on the decision he had already made: the boy had cheated and he was going, like many first formers before him, to get his arse thrashed; it really was as simple as that.
“Pratt-Mainwaring, you made a grave mistake this morning and for that I am going to cane you; there is no other punishment which will teach you quite as well as a good beating to mend your ways. Giving a sore bottom to a young man is one of the surest ways to cure him of his bad habits. And as far as it being painful, well it is; for that boy, is the whole purpose of a beating: to give the culprit a sore bottom. Sooner or later in this school most boys get their bottoms caned; and for most of them it is the first time that they are initiated into the vigorous rigour of a bare-bottom caning. And for you, Pratt-Mainwaring, your first time is right now. So shall we get on with it?”
Simon had listened to his Housemaster and what had been cold fear now turned into a cold sweat as he heard the words bare-bottom. This was the first time that Simon became aware of the fact that he was going to be caned directly on to his naked backside. Had he been slightly more experienced, he would have recognised the cracks he had heard as his two schoolmates were being beaten as the inimitable sound that a cane makes when it lands forcefully on naked flesh. Anyway, he now knew that he was going to be caned on his bare bottom: on the bare, in public-school speak; and he just had to accept it as his fate. But just how many strokes of the cane was he to be given? Mr. Knight still had not told him.
His Housemaster now got down to business. He first put a low backed chair into the centre of his study and then went across to his desk and after a few moments selected the cane which he proposed to apply to the boy’s arse. In view of Simon’s tender age, Mr. Knight had selected one of the lightest, junior canes from his comprehensive inventory of rods of correction! Although Pratt-Mainwaring was only eight and half years old, this no way deterred Mr. Knight from his task; along with many other English prep-schools at that time, the cane reigned supreme from the moment a boy entered, aged eight, to the day he left, aged thirteen. And Mr. Knight prided himself that he had a selection of canes to suit every age group and every physique. So although Simon was to be punished, Mr Knight had no intention of injuring the lad.
“Pratt-Mainwaring as you are a new boy, I am going to be lenient with you; you will receive only six strokes of the cane as a punishment for your misdeeds. Kindly take off your dressing gown and lift up your night-shirt clear of your buttocks; approach the chair and kneel on its seat. Take care not to kneel on your nightshirt as we need to keep that clear of the proceedings. Then bend across the back of the chair as far over as you can and stick your bottom in the air. Grab the chair legs with your hands to brace yourself.”
Simon slowly obeyed and adopted the position for his punishment. Mr Knight then took hold of his nightshirt and lifted it clear of his buttocks and folded it over the lad’s shoulders. To his great surprise, he found he was not looking at the lad’s naked arse as he had expected, as Simon had put on a pair of forbidden underpants.
“Pratt-Mainwaring, stand up boy, and take of those underpants you are wearing. The school rules strictly forbid the wearing of any underwear of any kind for sleeping. The only garment you are allowed to wear in bed is your night-shirt. Now kindly explain to me why you have ignored that rule.”
Simon was, of course, fully aware that all the boys slept only in their night-shirts and that all other clothes were proscribed by the school rules. And, truth to tell, he had, in fact, never worn any underpants in bed since his arrival at the school. But, not knowing until now, that beatings were always done on the bare, he had surreptitiously pulled on a pair of underpants as an added protection against the cane; and now he had been caught out. The boy shivered visibly at the thought of what might now happen to him.
Mr Knight saw through him immediately and said: “Pratt-Mainwaring you have all the makings of a deceitful boy. You put on the forbidden underpants thinking that they would ease the pain of the cane as you were unaware that we always beat on the bare in this school. Well young man, your ruse has been found out and as a consequence for your underhand behaviour, I shall now give you nine, rather than six, strokes, of the cane, the additional three being for your dishonesty. And you can count yourself lucky, young man, that I do not up your beating to a full twelve cuts. Now take off those underpants, get across the chair again, stick your bottom in the air boy and let me get started on the job to hand.”
Simon was now so petrified with fear that he was visibly trembling as he regained his position over the chair.
He then positioned himself to Simon’s left and tapped the cane gently across the middle of the lad’s rump. As he felt, for the very first time ever, a cane touch his naked bum, Simon realised that he had to brace himself for what was about to come otherwise he would disgrace himself and be taken for a wimp. Frankly, he was no different from any another new boy at the school who had found himself in the same position and about to undergo the same ordeal. He shuddered at that first touch of the cane which presaged what was to come and then closed his eyes and prayed that he would able to endure the nine cuts he was about to receive.
Suddenly, with no warning, the cane descended from on high and came to a sudden dead-stop with that inimitable crack which a rattan cane always makes when it mates forcibly with a lad’s naked arse. That first stroke, the crack it made and the excruciating pain which it produced would be etched on Simon’s memory for ever; in the same way that a young man never ever forgets losing his virginity on his first sexual experience. These are two landmarks in his experience of life: one unpleasant the other pleasant (well, usually!). But neither are ever forgotten.
Some writers try to describe the pain of a caning in fanciful terms; for instance, like the laying on of a red-hot rod across the naked flesh. But this is, of course, utter nonsense as schoolboys, and most other people too, never have, and never will have, such a gruesome experience. Suffice it to say that when a schoolmaster lays on the cane with some force, that the pain produced, even with a light junior cane, is stingingly awful and usually reduces even the most hardened miscreant to tears within a few strokes; and that is exactly what Simon now experienced: nothing more than a perfectly normal public-school beating, with a rattan cane applied to his naked arse until the pain became what is commonly referred to as unbearable. But, of course, that mythically unbearable pain has always to be born, as the hapless recipient has no choice in the matter.
Simon just gritted his teeth as stroke after stinging stroke landed on his naked bum. When it was all over, he was told to get up and go to bed by Mr Knight. He slept with nine other boys in a dormitory of ten beds and when he finally limped his way back there, his classmates were agog to hear and to see the result of what had happened to him. And so it was with a certain feeling of pride that Simon raised his nightshirt to show the other lads what a well roasted young arse looked like. Simon had been the first of that year’s intake to be beaten; but other lads followed him into Mr Knight’s study at regular intervals in the succeeding weeks. By the end of the first term, almost two thirds of the class had been initiated into the doubtful pleasures of the cane. Their life as English public-schoolboys had begun and most of them would continue, often unsuccessfully, to try to avoid the rigours of the cane for the rest of their school days.
So that was how Simon-Sebastian St. John Pratt-Mainwaring, at the tender age of eight and a half, was introduced to the painful rigours of life as a pupil at an English public prep-school. I suppose it was some consolation to know that your schoolmates were also subject to the same rigorous discipline; but when you are stretched over the back of a chair with your arse held high, waiting for the cane to land on your naked flesh, the fact that you were not alone in such matters is of little comfort.
The simple fact of the matter is that canings are bloody painful experiences; they hurt like hell no matter how nonchalant you try to be. You try your best to maintain your cool and not to be reduced to tears, especially as you grow older and the beatings become more severe; but most masters make sure that the pain you suffer is intense and even public-school sixth-formers aged eighteen find it hard not to weep on occasions.
To be continued in Episode 2/3
THE HEAD-BOY’S COMEUPPANCE
An Erotic Short Story
by
Jason Land
EPISODE 2/3
CHAPTER 5
Our story now moves on by several years, and we find Simon-Sebastian, under sufferance, with his younger brother, Jonathan Edward in a train on their way to the senior school, Beckett’s Academy, for the start of the new school year. Simon-Sebastian is now aged eighteen, has just been appointed Head-Boy of the school and is entering is final year. Jonathan is thirteen and has just left Beckett’s Court prep-school to start his first year at the Academy. As has already been mentioned, Simon and Jonathan had, at home, never really got on well together as brothers, for Simon had found his younger brother a persistent irritation, possibly due to their large age difference. But as they were today both going to the same place it was inevitable that the two brothers should travel together.
Simon was intending to set his brother to rights as to how things were done at Beckett’s. At home, Jonathan had always called Simon, much to his annoyance, either Si or Bro; well all that would stop as of now. They were no longer at home and at school things were quite different. Moreover, as Head-Boy, Simon would have power over his younger brother in a way that he had never had at home. At school Jonathan would be just another boy; and, brother or not, if he needed correcting, then Simon, in his capacity as Head-Boy, would do it. In fact, Simon was secretly quite looking forward to the first time when he could put his brother, arse naked across a chair and give his backside a really good thrashing in his capacity as Head- Boy. He saw such an event as pay-back for all the irritation that Jonathan had caused him over the years.
“Jonathan although we are brothers there are certain conventions which you have to adhere to now that you are moving into the upper school. Firstly, you may no longer address me in public by my Christian name nor I you by yours; in future you must always refer to me as Pratt-Mainwaring and never as Sir, which is the way you address all Masters. When we are in private you may call me Simon but no longer Si or Bro. In fact I think it might be better if you were to use just our family surname all the time, even when we are alone together, which will probably be but rarely.”
“Well if that is what you want, Bro, then it’s OK by me. So what do you call me?” Said Jonathan with a slightly impudent air, in precisely that manner which perpetually irritated Simon.
“Jonathan, it is not a question of what I want, but simply the way things are done at school. So you will address me as Pratt-Mainwaring and I shall also call you Pratt-Mainwaring. And for tihe year whilst we are both at the school, I shall be known to the masters as Pratt-Mainwaring Major, and you will be known as Pratt-Mainwaring Minor.”
“You know, Bro,” said Jonathan, intentionally going out of his way to needle his brother, “Don’t you think it would be simpler if I just called you Pratt? But then, I suppose not, as you might be taken as a prat, which would be unfortunate, so I suppose I’d better settle for Pratt-Mainwaring.”
It was nothing more than a frivolous remark by Jonathan, but if ever there was a final straw which broke the camel’s back, then this was it for Simon. He said nothing, but resolved there and then that as soon as the first occasion presented itself, there would be no hesitation, no moratorium; he would have his brother’s pants down, put him across a chair and reward his naked arse with the good hiding it deserved. And, he mentally noted, that final remark was worth an extra three cuts when that glorious day finally arrived on which he would have the pleasure, indeed the greatest of pleasure, of addressing his brother’s arse with the cane.
He was already mentally savouring the moment when he could bring his cane crashing down across his brother’s buns. Lost for a moment in his own thoughts, in a delicious state of anticipation of that much desired occasion, he was suddenly brought back to earth by a loud crash from the adjacent compartment, from which it has to be said, considerable shoutinghad been emanating.
Simon got up, went into the corridor, and slid open the door to the compartment where he found three boys, clearly first formers, bound for Beckett’s. The lads were in a boisterous, noisy mood and had been throwing themselves around the compartment of which they were the only occupants. Friendly their actions may have been, but their clothes were in disarray and they had just managed to dislodge a suitcase from luggage rack, which had broken open and disgorged its contents all over the compartment floor. For a few second the three boys, also rather dishevelled, looked silently at Simon, whom they did not, of course, know; but they saw that he too was wearing the school uniform and he was clearly a senior boy with some authority.
At that very moment a somewhat self important and pompous looking gentleman emerged from the next compartment. Viewing the mess created by the boys and seeing Simon standing there he said: “Young man, you are clearly a senior boy from Beckett’s Academy and I am surprised and shocked that you allow your young charges to behave in such an unseemly manner in a public conveyance. That sir, is not the way in which I expect public-schoolboys from Beckett’s behave.”
“That you sir, are not keeping your charges in order in public, is both a disgrace and an outrage; and if I may say so, it is a dereliction of your duty as a senior boy of the school. And I see from the star on your lapel that you are also a prefect, which makes your lack of responsibility even worse. That sudden loud bang scared my wife out of her wits. These three boys need a good birching, which is what they would have got in my day for such outrageous behaviour. I shall certainly take up this matter with your Headmaster. What sir, is your name?”
Simon gave the man his name, told him he was the newly appointed Head Boy of Beckett’s and that until a few moments ago, he had been totally unaware that the next compartment was occupied by boys going back to school; they were new boys, fresh out of prep-school , on their way to their first term at Beckett’s, none of whom he actually knew.
“I will certainly see to it sir,” he said, “That these three young miscreants receive a good thrashing for their bad behaviour. Allow me to assure you of that sir, for as Head Boy it is my power to beat these boys personally and I promise you that all three of them will go to bed this evening with very sore bottoms sir.”
Simon now turned to the three offenders and asked for their names: Willard, Moxon and DeVere. “Well Willard, Moxon and DeVere, as you now know my name is Pratt-Mainwaring and I am the Head-Boy of the school to which we are all on our way. In my position as Head-Boy I have certain obligations I have to respect and certain functions I have to carry out, some of which are rather unpleasant. Now, one of my obligations is to ensure that boys of the school behave correctly in public and do not bring the name of the school into disrepute. You three new boys have clearly behaved badly and have already created a bad impression, as you have just heard, before you even have arrived at your new school.”
“Unfortunately I did not have the chance to stop you in your unseemly behaviour as until I heard the crash of the suitcase on the floor, I was unaware that you were in the next compartment. So, gentlemen, I am afraid that you will reap a bitter harvest for what you have just sown. I will see the three of you in my study this evening after supper at eight, when, as new boys, you will have an early opportunity to familiarise yourselves with one of my less pleasant duties as Head-Boy. It will be my sad duty to initiate the three of you into one of the more painful but vitally necessary disciplinary traditions of Beckett’s. Kindly do not be late as I have an aversion to being kept waiting. And get this compartment ship-shape and your clothes in order before we arrive at the station. The three of you are an absolute disgrace.”
Simon now returned to his own compartment where he had left his brother. Jonathan, who had heard what Simon had said to the other lads, was, of course, curious to know what had happened next door and what his Head-Boy brother intend to do with the three boys to whom he had been talking.
“Jonathan, it is perfectly simple. The three boys next door are, like you, new boys on their way to their first term at Beckett’s. Their unruly behaviour has already caused offence as you doubtless heard. Fortunately I was on hand to witness what had happened although not to prevent their actions. And so, this evening I shall give all three of them a very thorough beating. The three of them will provide an excellent example for the start of the new school year, but doubtless other new boys will quickly follow them to my study and learn what a rigorous establishment Beckett’s is. And Jonathan, just to put you completely in the picture, at Beckett’s all beatings are on the bare; so those three lads are going to go to bed tonight with very sore arses, believe me.”
“I’m also a new boy this term, but you wouldn’t beat me, your own brother, would you Simon?” asked Jonathan.
“Jonathan, don’t talk such nonsense; if you misbehave and it comes to my attention of course I shall beat you. Make no mistake; the fact that you and I are brothers makes no difference at all. As Head-Boy of the school I am obliged to treat all pupils equally, and so, brother mine, if you want to avoid a very painful arse, I suggest that you watch your manners.”
“And just so that you have no illusions about things at Beckett’s as Head-Boy I never give less than six cuts and I have the right to give up to twenty-four for anyone offence. So this evening those three lads, although they don’t know it yet, are going to get nine each. I can tell, you Jonathan, when I cane a boy, I don’t hold back; believe me, those three are going to undergo a baptism of fire in my study after supper today; they are all going to go to bed tonight with well roasted arses in the very best Beckett’s tradition.”
Jonathan said nothing, but shuddered inwardly at the obvious enthusiasm his brother had for the cane. He prayed silently that he would never have to submit his own bum to his brother’s ministrations. He was, of course, ignorant of the fact that Simon already had him in his collimator and that it was just a question of time before his arse was thrashed as soon as a suitable opportunity presented itself – which it inevitably would!
CHAPTER 6
Before we join the Head-Boy in his study that evening, it is appropriate to explain something of the disciplinary ethos of Beckett’s. The Headmaster, the Reverend Dr. Eustace Meredith was a man in his early sixties, now approaching retirement. He had been born more or less at the time Victoria came to the throne and was, therefore, a true Victorian gentleman, who after taking holy orders had spent his entire life at Beckett’s. Initially a junior classics master, he had progressed steadily until he had become Headmaster some twenty years previously.
In keeping with the thinking of the generation to which he belonged, Dr. Meredith was a great believer in the beneficial effects of a well applied cane to a boy’s buttocks and so beatings, always on the bare, were a regular feature of life at Beckett’s. Indeed, Beckett’s was up there with the very best of English public-schools in the “never sparing the rod” tradition; and so its boys were never spoiled; from their day of entry, aged thirteen, until they finally left the school aged eighteen or nineteen, sore arses were the norm for many pupils. And make no mistake; the cane was used as liberally on the older boys as on their younger schoolmates; in a word; no one from first form to upper sixth, prefects included, was safe!
Strange to relate, although Dr. Meredith was totally in favour of corporal punishment and encouraged its regular use, he himself was not keen to wield the cane personally. Occasionally, when a case demanded it, he would summon an offending boy to his study for a “Headmaster’s Beating” and he alone wielded the birch when called for. But most of the time he was content to leave the discipline of the school in the hands of the prefects. On becoming Headmaster some twenty years previously, he had introduced a two tier system of prefects. Junior prefects were appointed in their penultimate year and in their final year in the upper-sixth form, graduated to being senior prefects.
The juniors were allowed to beat only boys of the first two forms with a junior cane and a maximum of six strokes per offence. The seniors, however, were given free rein over the entire school and could administer up to twelve strokes for each offence. There were six houses and each house had two junior and two senior prefects, one of whom, was nominated House-Captain, who had the added privilege of being able to administer eighteen strokes at any one time. So in all, across the six houses, there were some twenty-four prefects whose job it was to maintain order in the school. Housemasters could, of course, also beat their boys if they wished; but by and large they tended to follow the lead of the Headmaster and left the cane in the capable hands of the prefects.
But the unique feature of Beckett’s was the post of Head-Boy, who still remained attached to his original house, where he assumed the post of House-Captain in addition to his post as Head-Boy. He had a study bedroom in his house and slept there; but he also had a daytime study in the main school where he conducted the business of the Head-Boy. As Head-Boy he too was allowed to give twenty-four strokes of the cane to any offender, this being the maximum punishment authorised by the School Governors. So the Head-Boy had the same beating power as the Headmaster himself.
It was to his study that boys were summoned to answer for their misdeeds, of which the first offenders to be received by Simon-Sebastian in his capacity of Head-Boy were the three lads from the train affair. And let it be understood that as Simon Sebastian St. John Pratt-Mainwaring, the new Head-Boy had cut his teeth on the use of the cane as a junior prefect the previous year, the three boys from the train incident were in firm hands: very firm hands indeed; as their arses would shortly experience.
Simon and his brother arrived at Beckett’s and immediately separated. They were both in the same house, as had been their father and grandfather before them, but Sebastian wanted to install himself in the Head-Boy’s study in the main school as it was there that his main disciplinary activities would take place.
The previous year, as a junior prefect, he and his co-prefects had thrashed their younger schoolmates in the library each evening at eight. But now, as Head-Boy he had the luxury of having a private study where he could exercise his undoubted skill with the cane on any boy who broke the rules; and there were many, many rules which could be broken and frequently were; so the Head-Boy was assured of a good stream of visitors needing his tender loving attention to their arses once term got underway.
This was not to say that in the evenings when he wore his other hat as House-Captain, that he deprived himself of the opportunity to correct any errant boys of his own house. All in all, it would be fair to say that at Beckett’s the cane was on constant alert, lurking everywhere, just looking for its next victim.
The Head-Boy’s study was a spacious room comfortably furnished with a table and a few old arm chairs and a large desk. There were also several chairs with backs of different heights, which had been assembled over the years to ensure that boys of any height and age would have no difficulty in presenting their naked arses for punishment. Traditionally, the previous Head-Boy always left his favourite cane for his successor. So over the years quite a selection of different rattans had been assembled and they stood there, bristling like a porcupine in a large oriental pot: a testimony to the main activity which took place in the study.
But Simon’s heart jumped for joy when he saw, lying on his desk, a long thin cardboard box containing his personal set of new canes which had been ordered at the end of the previous term at the Headmaster’s behest. Dr. Meredith had, for the past twenty years, presented each new Head-Boy with a box of assorted canes as an indication of how much faith he placed in the beneficial effects of beating of boys’ backsides in the public-school education system.
Simon tore open the box to find a selection of six gleaming new rattan canes, straight, rather than crooked, each with a binding around the end by way of a handle. He read the accompanying leaflet, in which the School Supply House extolled the quality of the implements it sold.
“The six canes in this box are all made especially for us of the finest seasoned imported Malaccan rattan. We believe that this is the finest selection of school canes presently available in this country and all should give years of satisfaction in administering the traditional English form of correction to errant schoolboys. These canes, of which there is a calibre to suit boys of all ages, from the prep- school lad aged eight to the young man in his final year at public-school in the sixth form, are intended specifically for application to a boy’s naked buttocks. We do not recommend their use on a boy’s trousered buttocks, as the uniquely painful effect of rattan on naked flesh is then, of course lost. These canes are not suitable for use on a boy’s hand, for which the rigid bamboo is preferable.”
By the time he had finished reading this and examining the various canes in the set, Simon was already quite hard in his in his trousers and felt his underpants becoming damp. He could barely wait the evening when he would have the pleasure of christening one or more of his new treasures on the backsides of those three lads from the train that afternoon. Today was his first day as Head-Boy, but as we know, Simon, as a junior prefect, had honed his skill, with the cane on the bare arses of countless younger boys throughout the previous year.
It was amazing the intensity of pain that an experienced and determined young man could generate even with a junior cane. Simon had been, without any doubt, the hardest, most proficient and most prolific caner among the junior prefects of his year and the entire lower school went in total fear of him. Indeed it was his readiness to use the cane that had earned him his present position as Head-Boy a post to which he came with a formidable and feared reputation
He had rapidly become an expert in inducing the greatest possible pain with the six strokes allowed to him and had achieved absolute mastery of knowing precisely how hard he could apply the cane to the naked arse he was addressing without ever drawing blood. As a junior prefect, he had quickly earned the nick-name of “The Thrasher” by which he was known throughout the school, even by older boys who had never had the doubtful pleasure of dropping their trousers for him: a pleasure they would now have!
Junior boys would say: “I’m slated to see The Thrasher after supper this evening; he really is an absolute bastard with his bloody cane; wish me luck as I’ll need it.”
So Simon started his first term as Head-Boy with a formidable prior reputation with the cane, even with the boys who had no personal experience of being thrashed by him. And it goes without saying, that he had every intention by diligent, frequent and liberal use of the cane across the entire school throughout the coming year, of propelling his reputation onward and upward with the aim to leave Beckett’s known as the greatest disciplinarian Head-Boy ever.
The dreaded hour arrived for our three miscreants from the train to face the music and trembling as well they might, they arrived promptly as ordered at eight-thirty at Simon’s study. Simon sat looking very stern behind his desk as the three young lads lined up nervously in front of him. And they had good reason to be nervous for he had every intention of teaching them a very painful lesson for their bad behaviour in the train, as the selection of canes lying on the desk indicated.
But then when did Simon ever hold back when he wielded the cane? Short answer: never; not for nothing was his nickname the Thrasher. In his usual bullying manner, Simon berated the three boys for their behaviour before telling them to take off their coats, trousers and underpants and stand with their hands on their heads in a line against the wall.
The boys were, of course, totally embarrassed to be made to stand there with their genitals totally exposed and not to be allowed to use their hands to protect their privacy. But this was Simon’s way and frankly was quite a common occurrence in public-schools everywhere, where beating on the bare was widely practised. Although boys saw each other naked every day in the showers and dormitories, it was a totally different thing to be made to stand there and expose themselves in full to the person who was about to punish them.
Simon stood up, moved a chair into the middle of the room, picked up the cane he had selected to use, flexed it before the boys who were by now terrified.
“Well boys, the moment of truth has arrived; this is, in a way, a truly historic occasion; it is the first day of term and my first day in my position as Head-Boy and you three are to be the first boys to be beaten and on your first day at school no less; moreover, this is a brand new, rattan cane, which I shall use on your backsides for the first time; so all in all this is quite a special occasion; a sort of celebration of firsts, the memory of which, I am sure, will remain with you for a long time; as, I might add, will the pain which I am about to induce in your arses.”
“You will each received nine cuts of the cane, which is less than you really deserve, but as it is your first offence and the first day at school I shall be lenient (some hope!) with you. And I think you will all agree, once you have felt its first kiss, that a well applied the rattan-cane and a boy’s naked bottom is a marriage made in heaven – or just possibly in that other place. Well, Willard, Moxon and DeVere which of you would like to be the first to have his bum tickled by this delightfully flexible rod?”
The three lads were petrified with fear of what was about to happen to them as the full horror at what Simon had just said hit home.
As no one stepped forward to be the first to do his penance, Simon said: “Well boys, as none of you seems willing to lead the way, I shall beat you in alphabetical order. DeVere, kindly step forward, bend across the back of the chair and put your hands firmly on its seat. Now I expect you to remain perfectly still in that position as I cane you; and let us be quite clear young man; I want no movement at all and no clenching of your buttocks, which I expect to remain totally relaxed until I have finished with you. And that goes for you two also,” he added looking at Willard and Moxon both of whom stood there quivering with fear.
Simon stood initially to DeVere’s left, tapped his cane lightly on the equator of the lad’s buttocks, raised the cane high above his shoulder and then brought it flashing down with his customary expertise, where it landed with a resounding crack to be followed a second later by a cry of pain from DeVere; and it is that very crack which takes us back to that first inimitable sound of rattan mating with naked flesh, at the beginning of this story. Simon then, with his customary slow delivery to make sure that the supplicant boy fully appreciated the effect of every single stroke, continued until he had given DeVere’s arse a very sound, nine-stroke caning.
Expert as he was, Simon did not neglect to see that the the most sensitive area, the crease, where the lad’s buttocks joined his legs, received a good number of strokes. The howls of pain bellowed forth by DeVere increased dramatically in magnitude as the beating progressed until when finally told to get up by Simon, tears streamed in torrents down his face.
“Now DeVere, go and stand again beside your two partners in crime, put your hands back on your head and keep them there until I tell you that you may take them down. I trust I make myself clear; you may not start massaging your bum until I give you permission to do so. Is that understood?”
Willard and Moxon were both in a state of high nervous tension and fear, having just watched their classmate’s punishment, the likes of which they too were now about to suffer. Put crudely in modern idiomatic English, the two lads were practically shitting bricks and would have pissed their pants had they been wearing any. Simon pointed the cane at Moxon, who stepped forward to receive his punishment, to be followed a few minutes later by Willard.
Whilst still occupied in roasting Willard’s arse, Simon suddenly noticed that in spite of his warning, DeVere was nevertheless massaging his backside in an attempt to ease the pain. When Willard’s ordeal was over and he had taken his place, hands on head with the others, Simon told DeVere to step forward again.
“DeVere, I think I told you that you should not massage our bum until I gave you permission to do so, but I see that you disobeyed me. You boy are a disgrace, for not only did you make public nuisance of yourself in the train earlier today, but now you have chosen to disobey a clear instruction given to you by your Head-Boy. Well, DeVere we have ways of dealing with disobedient boys like you in this school; we beat them hard. Step up to the chair again boy and bend across it as I intend to give you three extra cuts of the cane for your disobedience.”
“Oh please, Pratt-Mainwaring I am sorry that I disobeyed you, but my bum was just hurting so much that I could not stop myself massaging it to try to ease the pain. So please forgive me this one time as I don’t want any more strokes of the cane; I really don’t; I don’t think I can stand any more.”
“DeVere, when I give you an order, I expect it to be obeyed. The reason why I made you, and now the other two of your classmates, stand there not allowing you to touch your aching arses, is precisely because you need to appreciate the full pain of retribution for your misdeeds. And so DeVere, you deserve to be punished for your disobedience and it is I, and I alone, who will decide whether you can take additional punishment; you, boy, have no voice in the matter. So unless you wish me to increase the additional strokes from three to six, I suggest you get yourself across that chair again and present me your arse again so that I can get on with it.”
Although he was clearly batting on a losing wicket, DeVere still did not give up and started to argue with Simon. However, he was now to learn what many already knew: that the Head-Boy had a heart of stone and that his arse was doomed to a further onslaught from the outset. As he continued to argue and object, his monologue was punctuated with one word interjections by Simon: four! five! six!
“DeVere, if you have not got the message by now, let me make clear to you that you have already talked what were three additional strokes into six. Now, unless you wish me to continue counting, I suggest that you get your arse across that chair immediately. As Head-Boy, I will not tolerate such disobedience and argument from a first former on his first day in school.”
And that is how a very chastened De Vere came to leave the Head- Boy’s study with a fifteen stroke arse roasting. Suffice it to say that all three lads learned their lesson and went to bed to show their room-mates their war-wounds. DeVere’s backside was declared by all who saw it to be a masterpiece of the Head-Boy’s skill with the cane: a true living work of art: one which De Vere himself found difficult to appreciate.
CHAPTER 7
But don’t think for a moment that Simon had finished with exercising his caning arm with the departure of the three lads, as you would be totally wrong. As we learned at the beginning of this story he had purposely left his study door slightly open so that anyone in earshot would know that term had begun and begun with a vengeance; that the cane was alive and well and was, moreover, already doing its appointed duty. However, it was not the open door and the dulcet sounds of the cane being used which led to the next sequence of events, but the curiosity of two other first formers.
Apart from Simon, only his brother Jonathan, who had been with him in the train, had know that there would be a triple beating that first evening of term. Filled with curiosity, Jonathan and one of his classmates had crept along the corridor with the intention of listening at the door to see what actually would happen. Stupidly the two boys were still standing in front of the door when it was suddenly flung wide open by Simon to usher out the three lads he had just beaten; so there they were, caught red-handed eavesdropping.
As soon as he saw the pair and that one of them was his irritating younger brother, Simon’s heart leapt for joy; this was just a gift from heaven; the Gods were truly with him tonight! He had caught the two of them eavesdropping, which was strictly forbidden and certainly a not a pastime in which a young gentleman (theoretically, of course) indulged; but here, handed to him on a plate, was a God-given opportunity, on the very first day of term no less, to take the metaphorical skin of his brother’s arse. Pay-back time for all the irritation that Jonathan had caused him over the years was now: right now! And he had every intention of grasping this opportunity with both hands.
“What are you two boys doing here in this corridor at this hour; you should both already be in your dorms.”
The two lads did not know what to say; they knew that they had been caught and saw no way of talking their way out of what was clearly going to be a very unpleasant situation.
Jonathan was the first to speak and even that got off to a bad start: “Well Si, we were…” His voice tailed off as he realised immediately that he had made a gaffe; so he started again: “Well Pratt-Mainwaring we were just…”
“Eavesdropping.” Simon finished the sentence for him and stopped him before he could start on some rigmarole of a far-fetched explanation for their illicit presence in the corridor at that time of night when they should have already been in their dormitory. “Well now that you are here, you may as well come in. You should both be in your dormitory at this time of night or at least in the showers preparing for bed. You two boys were eavesdropping and we in this school take a dim view, a very dim view indeed, of boys who eavesdrop; especially when they are supposed to be in bed. But we do have a way of teaching such boys the error of their ways as you are now about to find out. Take of your coats, trousers and underpants the pair of you and stand against the wall with your hands on your heads.”
The two lads obeyed but were already trembling with fear as they already knew that their arses were condemned to a roasting from the Head-Boy. Simon went over to his desk and selected a cane which he brandished before the two young lads, and showed them just now flexible it was, explaining how it adapted itself the contours of its target; in this case, the boys’ bottoms.
“What is your name, boy? I know all too well who your co-delinquent is; but I have not had the pleasure of your acquaintance until now.” Having elicited that the boy was called Colin Bryant, he said: “Well Bryant, kindly step over to that chair there, bend across the back, put your hands on the seat and keep perfectly still whilst I correct you. You are getting twelve cuts of the cane: six for eavesdropping and six for being in the corridor out of hours. Now brace yourself boy as this is going to hurt.”
In beating Bryant first, Simon had known that he was subjecting his brother to an agonising wait, watching his friend take his beating and knowing that he too would shortly follow.
As he thrashed the young lad, Simon came as near to feeling ashamed of himself as he ever would. He knew full well that a twelve cut punishment was over the top for the minor infraction committed by his brother and Bryant, but he was so intent on seizing this opportunity to thrash his brother that poor Bryant had to take the same excessive beating. How could it be otherwise? The poor lad howled bitterly as blow followed blow and when he finally was told to stand up, his backside was neatly lined with twelve tightly spaced cuts of the cane.
Jonathan Pratt-Mainwaring had to stand there and watch his friend being beaten and he too felt somewhat guilty as he had encouraged Bryant to come along to see what was happening to the trio of their future classmates from the train. But as he watched Bryant being beaten, he was terrified at the thought that in a few minutes it would be his arse that was was on the line; it would be his arse that would be receiving the same stinging ministrations from his elder brother and he knew Simon well enough to know that severity would be the order of the day.
Simon motioned to his brother to take his place over the chair. “Jump to it Pratt-Mainwaring; I haven’t got all night and it would be impolite to keep the cane waiting; so get your backside across that chair and quick about it” Jonathan could do none other than obey his brother, the Head-Boy who, as well might be imagined did not spare his younger brother as he laid on stroke after stroke with utter precision across Jonathan’s arse. Jonathan tried hard not to cry out in quiet defiance of his brother; but after six strokes he too was in tears.
Simon surveyed his handiwork after delivering the final stroke and felt infinitely satisfied that he had achieved his objective of giving his brother a good hiding so very quickly. So even though he did have a niggling guilty feeling about Bryant, he was, on the whole very pleased with the way things had turned out. And what the heck, Bryant would survive and he had had a good introductory lesson as to what life at Beckett’s was really like.
As they hobbled back to their dormitory, rubbing their backsides in a futile attempt to calm the raging pain that both of them felt, Bryant said to Jonathan: “I thought you had told me that the Head-Boy was your brother. I didn’t see much brotherly love between you and him just now. My God Jonathan, he really does know how to use that bloody cane; he beat the living daylights out of both of us.”
“He is my brother: the almighty Simon-Sebastian St. John Pratt-Mainwaring; and as you saw, he’s a right bloody bastard. He’s had it in for me for a long time and he took tonight as an excuse to beat the living daylights out of me. I’m just sorry that you had to be involved. But what’s done is done and I guess we shall survive.”
Simon felt very satisfied with his evening’s work: five well beaten arses in less than an hour and on the very first day of term to boot. That must be something of a record he thought, as he looked forward to his year as Head-Boy and the number of naked arses he would beat. He wondered if there were any statistics at all about different the performance of Head-Boys’ over the years, as he would quite like to top the best of them.
And so, in his own way, he felt himself totally invincible and untouchable in his position as Head-Boy; he was riding on the crest of a wave of euphoria as he picked up three of his new canes – such vital tools for keeping order – and went to find his study bedroom in his own House. But pride goes before a fall and invincible as the the Head-Boy felt himself to be, at the end of the day, things went horribly wrong for him. But before we move to Simon’s Goetterdaemmerung – twilight of the Gods – moment, there are still certain aspects of his character which are of interest.
To be concluded in Episode 3
THE HEAD-BOY’S COMEUPPANCE
An Erotic Short Story
by
Jason Land
EPISODE 3/3
CHAPTER 7
Simon arrived back at his House study, to be greeted there by his close friend, Philip Goddard, who was also a senior prefect and a member of the same House. Now in addition to his devotion to and expertise with the cane, Simon was also an ardent and regular user of that other rod, the one dangling between his legs; and it was in this context that Philip was waiting for him. To come directly to the point, Philip, now aged eighteen was homosexual.
The word gay had yet to be coined and used to describe homosexuals, who were referred to by a variety of unpleasant sounding terms such as bugger, sodomite and pervert. The general genteel public pretended that they did not exist; but, then as now, they did and all the legislation in the world, including threat of imprisonment in Britain did not stop them practising sex as theyt saw it. Philip Goddard e had known that he was attracted to men rather than women since he was about sixteen years old; but until that summer when he was already eighteen years old, he had had no practical experience of what we today call gay sex; in a word the lad had still been a virgin, a state he had wanted with all his heart to quit.
His desire had been met during the recent summer holidays, when he had spent two weeks with Simon at the Pratt-Mainwaring house. Simon was not himself in any way gay; he had, earlier that summer, lost his own virginity to one of the Pratt-Mainwaring’s two maids: a girl with the very un-alluring name of Ethel Smith, who was only just eighteen herself, but very pretty with it and who had caught Simon’s eye.
In fact, the eye catching, it transpired, was mutual, for Ethel was Simon’s greatest admirer among the domestic staff; and it has to be admitted, that character apart, Simon was a handsome muscular young stud, who was, to Ethel’s roving eye, very sexy. And to be fair to Simon, he was, in fact, a very sexy-looking and desirable guy. Sex was, of course, not a subject of polite conversation in 1900, but sex itself it was nevertheless omnipresent as it always had been and always would be. But Ethel, beneath her ordinary appearance, was quite a nymph and had set her cap on “Master Simon” as he was called by the domestic staff. So what with the two of them both having the hots for each other, it is difficult to say whether Simon seduced Ethel or vice-versa.
A young man’s first fuck can often be a disaster. Things can and often do go wrong, usually much to the embarrassment of the stud himself, who suddenly finds that now he has the girl willing and ready in his arms, he cannot rise to the occasion to do the deed. But Ethel was already highly experienced as Simon was by no means the first man with whom she had had sex. So, one way and another, she saw to it that the first time for Simon was a great success; and like most young men, once having tasted the forbidden fruit, he simply could not get enough of it. And so until the arrival of Philip, he fucked Ethel as often as he could that summer holiday, which was pretty regularly.
Ethel had no illusions that sheer lust rather than love played the greatest part in their relationship and took what she referred to as “precautions”, with which Simon was not really very familiar, sex education being distinctly lacking in those days. So Simon and Ethel had a purely carnal relationship; he enjoyed fucking her and she enjoyed being fucked by him; so one way and another, until the arrival of Philip, they had a great time, wallowing together in what might best be described as an orgy of consensual, youthful copulation. In a word, they both enjoyed themselves enormously; but they both recognised it for what it was: a flash in the pan that summer.
Simon and Philip shared a room for the two week duration of his visit. Simon, full of his newly acquired sexual prowess, could not wait to boast to his friend of his relationship with Ethel and even offered to introduce him to her personally as he thought his friend might also like to enjoy the pleasures of a sex hungry girl; Philip however had other ideas.
“Simon, don’t be shocked if I ask you a very delicate question. You do, I suppose know, that two men can have a sexual relationship together. One guy can fuck another in much the same way as he fucks a woman; or so I am told. So as you have, from what you say, been fucking Ethel regularly this summer, I was just wondering if you might like to widen your sexual horizons a bit and benefit from the fact that I am here, sharing this room with you, for the next two weeks. In case you had not realised, Simon, I think I am myself what is known as a homosexual, or would be one given half a chance. The thing is, you see that I have known for a few years now that unlike most of our class-mates who are all fixated on women, my interest is totally centred on other men.”
“Now we have seen each other God only knows how many times in the showers these last few years and I can tell you quite honestly, Simon, that I just adore you and your muscles and the general way you look and the size of your penis and I would really like you to have sex with me. I’m actually still a virgin as I’ve never had any kind of sex, but I just know, Simon, that I desperately want to get my butt fucked by someone and I would love you to do it with your beautiful big cock. So what do you think? Do you think that you might like to try out your cock on a man to see how it compares with having sex with a woman? I hope that you are not too shocked to find that your closest friend is a future faggot.”
Simon was like many other young men in their late teens. He had wanted to have sex with someone whom he quite naturally had always foreseen as being of the opposite sex; he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with Ethel; but he had never even given any thought that he might try it out with another man. He liked Philip tremendously, but had never seen him as other than a close friend: someone at school with whom he drank and smoked – both strictly forbidden of course.
But now here was Philip proposing that the two of them pass to a stage of intimacy of which he had never dreamt; to be frank to commit an act which he had never ever thought of. But as for being shocked; well he was not; and never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, after some slight hesitation: very slight indeed, he agreed to try it out. After all, what had he to lose? And Philip was his best friend, so what the hell; if it would make him happy, why not?
But he made quite clear to Philip that if he did as requested, it would be strictly a one way street; he would fuck Philip but there would never be a return match. To this Philip readily agreed, for in fact, he just wanted someone to fuck him and was not himself at all interested in fucking anybody himself. I suppose he was what we today would classify as a dedicated bottom in the world of gay sex.
Such men do exist, but it is rather sad that they never exercise their own man-meat on anyone and in most cases rely either on their partner or their own hand-work to bring them to orgasm; for without an orgasm, any kind of sex for men is like a wet blanket; there is nothing so frustrating and disappointing in not being able to cum after all the effort one has put into the coital act; to be denied those few seconds of pure, unadulterated, sublime pleasure is just so infuriatingly frustrating.
So the bedroom door was locked and the two young men stripped off completely. Although they had seen each other naked many times in the showers at school this was something quite different; they were about to commit a sexual act, officially known as buggery – and ugly word if there ever was one – for which they could both be expelled from school and which, more importantly, was forbidden by law and which could lead to imprisonment if they were ever caught in the act. But today they were not at school and in the privacy of Simon’s bedroom the two of them prepared for their first union.
Simon had wondered after he had agreed to be the active party, if his cock would rise to the occasion; but he had nothing to fear, as by the time the two of them were naked he was already sporting a nine inch well proportioned erection. Philip gave a soft whistle of admiration as he looked with new eyes at Simon who was to be his first sex partner. Simon was a truly gorgeous young stud and standing there with his huge cock rock-hard and fuck-ready he looked like how we all imagine a Greek God to be. Philip felt privileged that Simon had agreed to initiate him into what he desperately hoped would be the joys of anal sex; he felt sure that that was what he wanted and he just hoped that he would enjoy it when it finally happened.
The two young men stood looking at each other wondering what to do as neither of them had any experience of the gay sex act; and Simon, in spite of his recent sexual experience, had been taken by the hand, so to speak, by Ethel as she showed him what to do. But Ethel was not there today to help either of them get started and would anyhow probably have been appalled to see her lover, Simon, contemplating having anal sex with another man.
So finally, Philip said: “I think we need some lubricant to facilitate things. Look Simon I have brought a bottle of baby oil with me, so why don’t you just anoint your cock and my arse with it before we start.”
Philip knelt on his bed, thrust his arse into the air and spread his legs to give Simon access to his anus. Simon looked at his friend and wondered how earth he was ever going to get his cock into Philip’s anus, which looked like a very small pucker between his legs situated, as it was, inconveniently at the bottom of the cleavage between his buttocks. But as Philip urged him on to begin, he too knelt down behind his friend, pushed the tip of his cock, already dripping with anticipative pre-cum, against his hole and attempted to penetrate his friend by applying some gentle pressure.
At first the tight sphincter muscle guarding the entry to Philip’s anus resisted his efforts, but Philip told him to increase the force. And eventually, the anal sphincter relaxed and his cock slid smoothly inside Philip. Philip winced just once with pain before urging Simon to go ahead and fuck him as hard as he could. So Simon began very gently to fuck his friend; initially with short gentle strokes of his cock but as he himself became aroused and caught up into the eroticism of what he was doing, he found himself pounding his friend’s arse as hard as he could until he finally shot his load entirely inside of his partner.
This was just pure raw sex; once he had started, Simon thought only of himself; there was no attempt made to satisfy his Philip. In fact, Simon had never given a thought to the fact that Philip too needed to climax; to have an orgasm and shoot his wad just as he himself had done. As Simon withdrew himself, Philip turned over onto his back and began frantically to jerk himself off with his hand until he too exploded in a gigantic orgasm accompanied by a series of powerful spurts of his own creamy cum.
So that was how Simon and Philip began their sexual relationship, which intensified during the two weeks that Philip spent with Simon in the family house. Lord only knows what the Colonel would have said had he known what the two lads were up to each evening when they went to bed. But sex is such a totally addictive pastime that by the time it came for Philip to leave, the two of them had become a very proficient at gay copulation; and both of them adored it. Simon had found that he enjoyed fucking Philip every bit as much as he did having regular sex with Ethel, who sort of got dumped for the two weeks that Philip was around.
Simon, to his credit, quickly learned that sex was a two-way business and that he needed, as always the prime mover in their relationship, to hold his own climax back until Philip was ready to cum so that they regularly managed to climax together. It has to be said that their relationship, defined in law as buggery, actually deepened and finally, by the time Philip left, was just possibly touched with love.
By the end of his stay Philip was totally committed to Simon and was happy that the two of them would be together at Beckett’s for their final year as pupils; he was looking forward to a final school year of active sex with his friend and hopefully, later at University; they were both trying for admission to Cambridge. Alas as we will learn later, that idyllic dream was cut short, basically by the stupidity of Simon himself.
So to come back to Simon’s return to his house study to find Philip waiting for him there, it was clear that Philip wanted them to have sex together as they had not seen one another during the past two weeks since Philip had left the Pratt-Mainwaring household. If ever there was a case of “absence makes the heart grow fonder” this was it. No sooner had Simon entered his study and deposited his new canes on his desk, than Philip locked the door and more or less tore the clothes of his friend.
Within five minutes the two of them were together in an act of vigorous copulation. Philip may have been the prime mover that evening in getting things started, but once Simon had penetrated his friend, he got the bit between his teeth, and fucked Philip’s arse as if there was no tomorrow. Neither of them had had any sex for the past two weeks and when orgasm came, it came with a vengeance and was, for both of them, just the finest and most intense experience of their lives to date. Both young men produced huge quantities of thick, creamy sperm and were in seventh heaven as they hugged each other.
After a few minutes pause during which they both recovered from their efforts, Philip then took Simon’s cock, which had by then softened, into his mouth and started to suck him off; quite clearly he had not had enough and endeavoured to bring Simon back into what I suppose one might best call active service. Simon quickly responded and without a word passing between the two of them took Philip again, this time from the front position, holding his legs over his shoulders as he thrust himself for a second time deep into his partner.
Once again after an admirable piece of vigorous fucking with Simon’s large and hard cock, both lads climaxed together with Philip ejaculating his second load all over Simon’s chest and Simon shooting his wad deep inside his partner. This time they both lay, more or less exhausted beside each other to allow Simon to regain his breath after what had been a magnificently simulating example of what we today call gay sex. Philip produced a bottle of whisky and some cigarettes and they both relaxed together, enjoying the strictly forbidden fruits which he had brought with him from home.
Half an hour later, Simon stood up refreshed from the rest and the drink, walked across to his desk picked up a cane, flashed it menacingly through the air and said: “Philip, let’s get dressed as I really feel like beating the odd arse or two before turning in for the night; it would make a great end to what has been a splendid day. Just think of it; I have already thrashed five lads, my younger brother included, earlier this evening, and I can tell you, if ever a boy deserved a sore arse it’s my brother; so he got exactly what he merited. So get your clothes on, pick up one of my new canes courtesy Dr. Meredith and let’s do a quiet trawl of some of the dorms to see if we can catch anybody in flagrante.”
CHAPTER 8
Like most prefects, Philip as also not averse to beating his schoolmates backsides if the occasion arose. And so the two of them set off together, prowling along the corridor off which several dormitories led. The first to fifth formers slept in ten-bed dorms, whereas the sixth formers all had their own study bedrooms. The first-formers’ dorm, where the trio, Willard, Moxon and DeVere, together with Bryant and Simon’s brother were nursing their sore arses, was in darkness and complete silence reigned. The sight of five well striped backsides out of ten boys had clearly had a calming effect on the other lads, who realised that their own arses were in danger if they so much as put a foot wrong.
However, the second-formers’ dorm proved a more fruitful source of cane fodder for the two prefects. Simon pointed to the light coming from under the door, when lights-out was half an hour ago. Simon gently opened the door to see two boys engaged in what was a friendly pillow fight: a nevertheless forbidden activity. The other occupants were in their beds but were watching agog as their two classmates hit each other over the head with their pillows, one of which burst open just as the prefects entered, showering the place with a storm of feathers.
Suddenly aware that the two prefects were there, the fight stopped. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what the likely outcome was to be as both prefects were each carrying a cane. Simon, as Head-Boy, took charge of the situation:
“Merryweather and Grattan-Innes; what are you playing at. Look at the mess you have made. Both of you step to the ends of your beds and bend over.” He himself went to Merryweather and motioned to Philip to deal with Grattan-Innes. Merryweather was trembling visibly as Simon bent over and pulled the boy’s his nightshirt over his shoulders to expose what he assumed would be the lad’s naked arse; but to his surprise he found himself looking at a pair underpants. Grattan-Innes, however presented Philip with his naked arse.
Simon looked at Merryweather and told him, to stand up, take of his underpants and then bend over his bed again. Then, addressing the entire dorm, he said: “Now you all know the rule that only a nightshirt is to be worn in bed, so any other boy who is sleeping in his underpants, get up now and stand at the end of his bed.”
For a moment, there was no response and then two other lads sheepishly got up and stood at the end of their beds.
But Simon was always very thorough and so he said: “Is that everyone who is disobeying the rules? If there is anyone else wearing underpants in bed, this is the final chance to get up now and stand at the foot his your bed.”
“Very well; so three boys have broken the rules and intended to sleep in their underpants. Now the rest of you, out of bed at the double and hold up your nightshirts.”
Two boys went bright red at this order and started trembling as well they might, for they raised their nightshirts to reveal that they too were wearing underpants.
“Well, Goddard, I see that we have an arduous task before us this evening. Two boys fighting, one wearing underpants; two other boys owning up to wearing underpants and two other very deceitful boys who did not own up but were found to be wearing underpants. So by my reckoning, I see no less than six bottoms requiring urgent attention from the cane.”
Merryweather and Grattan-Innes were still bent over their beds awaiting their fate.
“Goddard, if you would treat Grattan- Innes to six good cuts of your cane, I will deal with Merryweather, who unfortunately will receive six additional, strokes as a punishment for wearing underpants, which he knew was strictly forbidden.”
Then with all the other boys looking on in horror and in some cases with justifiable fear, the two prefects proceeded to thrash the first two lads. Six stinging strokes were delivered in exact unison. Simon then continued alone and gave Merryweather his six extra strokes. The crack of the two canes hitting naked flesh resonated through the room and both boys were quickly reduced to tears.
Then followed the second two lads, who had owned up to their sins; each received six swingeing cuts of the cane, again coordinated with amazing precision. Simon then looked witheringly at the remaining two lads, both of whom were shivering with fear at what was about to happen to them.
“You two are an utterly despicable and deceitful pair; you chose to attempt to conceal that fact that you were wearing underpants and for that you will receive extra punishment: twelve cuts of the cane each. Now bend over and keep perfectly still while Goddard and I deal with you.”
The two boys howled with pain as stroke after stroke cracked down against their naked arses. Both prefects laid on the cane to the limit so that the two lads finished up with very deep stripes across their entire backsides. They had indeed paid a heavy price for their deceitfulness.
And that was an example of how Pratt-Mainwaring began and continued his reign as Head-Boy. It was tantamount to a reign of terror, as he saw himself invincible and untouchable with his status as Head-Boy. No offence, however slight, which came to his attention, escaped a painful beating. However it all came suddenly to a stunningly jarring end. Simon was one of those people, obsessed by the power he had, whose dictum was “Do I say and not as I do.” And it was exactly this mentality, where he placed himself above the rules which he rigorously enforced with horribly painful consequences on others, which ultimately proved his own Achilles’s heel.
CHAPTER 9
Simon, who beat any boy he caught smoking or drinking without the slightest hesitation, nevertheless regularly indulged, quite hypocritically, in such pleasures himself. He also continued his regular sexual activities with his friend, Philip Goddard. As time passed and he grew more confident and bolder, not content with fucking Philip in the comfort of his own study, he started sneaking out from the school premises on Saturday nights and frequenting a rather low-level public-house, the upper floor of which was given over to the pleasures of the flesh, both hetero and homosexual. He had tried to interest Philip into joining him on such illicit escapades, but Philip had very wisely, as it turned out, declined.
The upper floor of the pub was not a normal brothel, but a place where like minded men and women of loose morals could find a sex partner, the pub being content to charge a small “club entrance fee” supply the drinks and cigarettes which were consumed in large quantities by the clientele. So no money changed hands for sexual coupling which were based solely on mutual attraction.
Simon was, as has previously been remarked, a very handsome, muscular and sexually well-endowed young man of eighteen and with what had become his catholic taste in sex, he had no problem at all in attracting sexual partners of either sex. For a while all went swimmingly well until one fateful day, the place was raided by the police, whom someone had tipped off, that in addition to dispensing beer quite legally to in public bars, the pub was running an upstairs bawdy house.
Luckily for Simon on that occasion he was sexually involved with a woman, for had he been caught having sex with a man, as he occasionally did, he could have been faced with imprisonment. Simon was the youngest person arrested that evening and along with the entire company, men and women, they were brought before the local magistrate. Luckily for Simon, the magistrate was a governor of Beckett’s Academy, and realising that the lad was a pupil of the school dismissed the charges against him but delivered him into the hands of the Headmaster, the Reverend Dr. Meredith.
Some two days later, Simon found himself facing a very irate Dr. Meredith in his study. Irate is, in fact, a mild word to describe the mood of the Headmaster, who was seething with rage at what had happened. Simon stood there in front of him, totally penitent wondering what he could possibly salvage out of the situation in which he found himself. The short answer, as he was soon to find out, was very little: nothing at all in fact.
“Pratt-Mainwaring, you are, or as I should say, were, the Head-Boy of this school; the person in whom I had placed the greatest trust and whom I had endowed with the greatest and gravest of responsibilities. You, Pratt-Mainwaring, had practically the responsibilities of a master in matters of discipline and seeing that the school rules were adhered to. And what did you do? You threw the whole lot out of the window and broke some of the most sacred rules which you were supposed to be monitoring.”
“That a pupil of this school with the prestige that it enjoys in this town, should be taken by the police whilst frequenting a bawdy house, smoking and drinking and indulging in sexual intimacy with a woman, is intolerable. And moreover, I understand that buggery was also a frequent occurrence in that place of ill-repute. Thank God, Pratt-Mainwaring, that you were not caught indulging in such an unnatural action, in which I pray to God you never indulged.”
Simon became more and more dejected as the Head master went on berating him before the axe finally fell. But when it did it was with a horrible finality, which shocked Simon to the core, for, in a word, his school career was finished.
“Pratt-Mainwaring, I have given much thought to your offence and I find your actions are such a gross abuse of trust, that I am afraid I have to ask your father to withdraw you from this school; in a word boy, I am expelling you. Moreover, reluctant as I am to administer corporal punishment myself, which is why I trusted you and your co-prefects to wield the cane throughout the school, I have decided that on this occasion I shall thrash you personally.”
“Pratt-Mainwaring, I find that your offence and breach of trust are just so great, that you merit the most severe of punishments which the School Regulations allow me to administer: you will receive fifteen strokes of the birch to be followed immediately by nine strokes of the cane. I intend to leave you, Pratt-Mainwaring, with a bottom on which you will not sit comfortingly for at least a week; and believe me boy, after what you have done, you richly deserve the most severe thrashing which I or anyone else can give you.”
“It is now almost noon. Pratt-Mainwaring, you will present yourself here in my study again this evening at eight thirty precisely. You will wear your dressing gown anda pair of gym shorts and gym vest and nothing else. You will not attend classes for the rest of the day or, for that matter, ever again in this school. I trust I make myself clear. You, boy, have ruined your chances of going to Cambridge, but you have made your bed and now you must lie in it. You will spend your remaining time here in packing your things and you will leave as soon as arrangements for your departure have been agreed with your father, whom I shall, of course, be contacting. In the meantime I suggest that you reflect on your future.”
Simon was dumbstruck by what the Headmaster had just said. He had not asked him for an explanation of his behaviour, which in some ways was relief, for there was very little that Simon could say in defence of what he had done other than that he was sorry and that he would never do it again. But he knew, given his orientation and attitude to life in general, that that would have been a hollow promise; he could no more stop his sexual activities than fly to the moon. But inevitably having stood there in total silence, listening to the Headmaster berate him, when he had finished, Simon hesitantly attempted to say something.
The Headmaster cut him short: “Pratt-Mainwaring, there is nothing: absolutely nothing at all, which you can say which will in anyway excuse your appalling behaviour and betrayal of the trust I so mistakenly placed in you; your actions, boy are beyond the pale; so I suggest you save your excuses, if such there are, though I seriously doubt it, for your father, who as a military man accustomed to order, rules and discipline, will probably take as dim a view of your behaviour as do I and as such, may well wish to readdress your bottom. And frankly I would not blame him in the slightest if he were to give you another thrashing.”
Simon shuddered inwardly at the thought of having to face his father, for if ever there was an unforgiving figure it was Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring. He was also in a state of shock at the severity of the Headmaster’s decision, but he realised that he probably deserved all that was coming to him. And as he went back to his study to begin to pack his things, he reflected on the number of times he had thrashed boys arses for drinking and smoking in the dorms and now with a certain poetic justice, the pigeons had come home to roost, and he was about to receive the same himself.
Although not looking forward one bit to what promised be a very unpleasant and painful evening, he knew in his heart of hearts that he merited the beating he was to receive. Was this admission to himself of the sheer enormity of what he had done; the beginning of a self appraisal which might lead him to better and more reasonable behaviour? He had allowed himself to become intoxicated by the power he had had and now, in the past few seconds it had all evaporated like a puff of breath on the winter air: gone in a second.
It was just before supper that Philip came to find him, looking very unhappy “I have just learned what has happened to you and that you are being expelled from school. Gosh, Simon I’m really very sorry; but you know you were a fucking idiot to ever even think of going to that cesspool of a pub, let alone up to the so called private club. I’m really glad that I did not let you persuade me to go with you otherwise we would both be being cashiered.”
“How the hell do you know I’m being kicked out, expelled, cashiered, dumped; call it what you will. Only the Headmaster and I had talked about this so how do you know and how much do you know?”
And now came a really bitter pill for Simon to swallow. “Well if you must know, it was old Meredith himself who told me. He sent for me late this afternoon, told me you would be leaving and appointed me Head-Boy to replace you. I don’t think he has any idea that you and I are, how shall I put it tactfully? Close.”
Simon almost choked when he heard the news. Philip, his closest friend was to replace him; he could barely believe his ears: but there was nothing, absolutely nothing at all he could do about it; and anyway, what did it matter to him now that he was leaving the school?
“So what did the Reverend Doctor have to say about me?”
“Well, to be honest, he was not very specific. He said that for various reasons he had decided that you were no longer suitable to be the Head-Boy of the school and that you had sorely disappointed him by frequenting a house of ill-repute, was the way he put it and that after considerable thought he had decided that you should leave the school and then, out of the blue he offered me the job of Head-Boy, which, I of, course, had to accept. I then more or less pieced together in my own mind what had happened; that you had been caught with your pants down in the pub and that was just one step too far for him to swallow and that you had to go.”
So Simon told his best friend the whole story; how he had been engaged in having sex with a woman when the police had arrived and how lucky it was to have been a woman and not a man otherwise the consequences, already dire, could have been much worse. So they all finished up in front of the magistrate, who luckily happened to be a school governor; he had called Simon a schoolboy and had delivered him back to Dr. Meredith thereby avoiding his facing a court hearing and the honour of the school would not be publicly besmirched. Simon asked his friend to promise not to spread what he knew around, which Philip promised him.
Then Philip said: “But I have another piece of not very exciting news for you; Meredith told me that tonight he is going to birch and cane you for your deeds and that he is going to go to town on your arse. He didn’t put it quite like that of course, but he did tell me that you are to get the maximum the school rules permit: fifteen of the birch and nine of the cane on the bare. Frankly Simon, it’s just too bloody awful to contemplate. But I’m afraid it gets worse; he has ordered me, as Head-Boy, to be there to witness your beating.”
Simon told Philip that he already knew that Dr. Meredith was going to thrash the living daylights out of him that evening but was astonished to hear that Philip had been ordered to attend.
“What the fuck does he think he is doing? Isn’t it enough for him that he is kicking me out and reducing my arse to shreds in the process. And now the old sod wants to humiliate me further by making one of my classmates watch me take a birching. The next thing we know, he’ll have changed his mind and decided to flog me in front of the entire school. I’ve never ever had a birching you know, Philip, and I can’t think of anyone who ever had. And I can tell you that I’m not looking forward to it in the least. He’s really got it in for me as he proposes to do it personally, which is very rare; although he totally approves of corporal punishment he actually has not much taste for doing it himself, which is why he leaves it to the prefects.”
A little later, Simon’s brother, Jonathan arrived; cheeky as cheese and vauntingly exuding confidence that he knew something: “Say Simon; it’s on the grape-vine that you are no longer Head-Boy and that the Reverend Doctor is kicking you out of school; is it true?”
“Jonathan why do you always have to be your normal irritating self? I don’t know where you got that rumour from but you had better wait and see.”
“So, bro, it is true, isn’t it? I can just tell from what you have said, Come on Si, be a sport for once and tell me what happened.”
“Jonathan, true or false, you are the last person to whom I would tell anything at all, so just belt up and disappear.”
“So, now I’m sure it’s true, otherwise if you were still Head-Boy you’d have been thrashing my arse by now. Anyway if you are being sacked, I shan’t be sorry, as you were bloody rotten to me when you thrashed me at the beginning of term.” And with that expression of fraternal affection, he left his brother fuming inwardly. Jonathan had certainly not lost the art of needling his elder brother.
After supper, Simon went back to his room, stripped off and pulled on his gym shorts and singlet, put on his dressing gown and made his way to the fateful appointment with the Headmaster. He felt exactly like a condemned prisoner awaiting his execution; in a way he wished that Dr. Meredith had thrashed him that morning rather than make him wait until the evening.
On entering the Headmaster’s study, he saw that a professional beating horse with wrist and ankle straps had been positioned in the centre of the floor. His heart missed a beat as he saw a bucket of water containing two birches, clearly destined for his backside. It was the beginning of a horrible experience which was not happening; except that it was. He found himself in a cold sweat as he realised that the fatidic moment had arrived and he was going to have his arse well and truly roasted. Wasn’t it enough to expel him from the school and wreck his chances of going to Cambridge? Evidently not!
“Ah Pratt-Mainwaring, do come in. You know Goddard of course as he is a co-prefect, but let me tell you that I have named him as the new Head-Boy to replace you. He will assist me in my sad task, of giving you a thorough beating in retribution for your recent outrageous and regrettable actions, which have sadly brought us together this evening.”
“I have not had occasion to birch a boy for several years now, but I think that I can promise you that you will not be disappointed with my efforts on your behalf this evening. I will do my very best to see that you will leave here with what I understand is referred to in the vernacular as a well roasted arse. And not to mince words the pain you are about to experience is well and truly deserved, as well you know, young man.”
So much for the encouragingly welcoming words of the Reverend Dr. Meredith; Simon just stood there shivering with fear of what was about to come and said nothing. He just wished that the Headmaster would get on with it, beat him and let him go back to his room. Philip said nothing at all.
“So boy, take off your dressing gown step out of your shorts and bend across the horse there, so that I can see your naked buttocks; you will, as I am sure you anticipated, as tradition demands, be both birched and caned on the bare. Goddard, if you would be good enough to attach the wrist and ankle straps I think we shall be ready to begin. Perhaps you would be good enough to call out the strokes.”
“There is no need for haste, as a birching is like a meal with good wine; it needs taking slowly to be fully appreciated by the recipient. Like every course in a dinner, I try to ensure that when I birch a boy, he has adequate time to appreciate the full effect of each and every stroke. That I feel is the art in this traditional form of punishment, which I much regret to say I suspect is on the way to extinction.”
With that the Headmaster picked out one of the birches from the bucket, shook off the excess water, laid it gently across the middle of Simon’s arse and nodded to Philip that he should call the first stroke. Simon braced himself as he felt the cold water from the birch on his naked skin and the next thing he knew was that birch had descended with lightening speed to land across the centre of his naked buttocks. And then at fifteen second intervals each of which seemed like an age, stroke followed stroke with the pain gradually building up to that legendary unbearable level, which Simon nevertheless had to bear.
As Simon was now finding out, that “legendary unbearable level” turned out to be dreadfully true. It was the most horribly painful experience Simon had ever had in his life. After fifteen strokes of the birch he understood for the first time why it was considered the most severe of all punishments. But his punishment was not yet over, for he still had nine cuts of the cane to bear across his now flamingly painful arse.
“I think we will take a ten minute pause at this stage, before we concluded your punishment during which you will remain across the horse, Pratt-Mainwaring. Now, Goddard, I am rather tired with my efforts and I am therefore delegating to you the task of of giving Pratt-Mainwaring the additional nine cuts of the cane. It will be a fitting introduction to your duties as Head-Boy.”
Simon could not believe his ears when he heard this bolt from the blue; he was to suffer the indignity of taking nine cuts of the cane, from his closest friend Philip. Could matter get any worse?
“Headmaster, are you sure that you wish me to complete the punishment sir? Don’t you think that it would be better in view of the gravity of the offence, if you finished the matter yourself sir?”
“No, no Goddard; I want you to go ahead with the cane. As I said, I am rather tired and it will be good experience for you. It will also be a uniquely memorable occasion for you will be using the cane for the first time in your new position as Head-Boy and will be applying it to the buttocks of the previous Head-Boy. And see that you lay the rod on well, for I want Pratt-Mainwaring to leave here with a well striped pair of buttocks. This has to be a memorable occasion for him: one to teach him a lesson he will never forget; so don’t hold back at all. Now Goddard, let me see you put nine perfectly parallel stripes across Pratt-Mainwaring’s backside.”
Which is, of course, exactly what Philip was obliged to do.
Simon was in tears by the time it was over and Philip helped him to put on his dressing gown as his arse was just so very painful he could not bear to touch it. If ever a boy had had an exemplary beating, then this was it. Many people might say that the beating was just too severe. But clearly the Reverend Dr. Meredith had been so enraged by Simon’s outrageous actions, as he had every reason to be, that he threw the book at him and gave him the maximum number of cuts allowed under the school rules.
No one could remember an occasion where a boy had suffered the maximum penalty; eighteen strokes were delivered from time to time; possibly twice a term; but twenty-four; never. So Simon had the distinction of having the most thoroughly beaten arse at Beckett’s within living memory; quite a distinction but one which Simon would have preferred not to have had bestowed upon him.
That night Philip came to Simon’s room where his friend lay face down naked on his bed, his arse raging with pain. Philip shuddered at what Simon had had to suffer for his sins, and attempted to rub in a little soothing ointment onto the flaming buttocks, but so great was the pain that Simon waved his friend away. Philip apologised to his friend for having been landed with the job of wielding the cane on his arse.
“Do you suppose,” he asked, “That old Meredith knows about our liaison and made me beat you by way of a lesson to us both?”
The two young men pondered that question. They had never had sex together other than in strictest privacy, but the walls had ears and little remained secret in a public-school for long, as Simon had found out. In no time at all the full story of his actions, subsequent expulsion and beating had circulated around the entire school. Who had leaked the story? Who knows? But everyone knew everything; even that Goddard, the new Head-Boy, had been made to beat his friend.
But for Simon all that was water under the bridge as the train drew into the local station where his father had sent the footman with the fly to pick him up and take him back to the Pratt-Mainwaring house. As they drove homeward, Simon became more and more nervous, more apprehensive as to what the meeting with his father would be like. Truth to tell he was absolutely terrified and as things turned out he had had good reason to be. The door was opened by the butler who welcomed Master Simon home and then told him that his father wanted to see him immediately in his study.
Simon anxious to delay the confrontation with what he knew would be an irate Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring, ventured to suggest that perhaps he should go and freshen up before going to see his father. But the butler was firm; his father had insisted on an immediate meeting. And so, with his heart in his mouth and his courage in his shoes, Simon made his way to his father’s study, where, as you will remember, no one, not even his mother, Lavinia, entered without an invitation. But on this occasion, Simon had more than an invitation; this was a command performance to which he had been ordered.
As soon as Simon entered the study, he saw that his father was seething with rage; he was akin to a volcano on the point of erupting.
Civilities over, the Colonel immediately began to take his son to task. “I never thought, Simon, that I would live to see the day when my son, Head-Boy of the school at which I and my father before me received our education, could stoop so low as to betray the trust which the Headmaster had placed in him. My God, Simon, what on earth did you think you were doing; what possessed you to break all the rules which as Head-Boy you were supposed to be upholding. And not only the rules, but the most important of them, designed to protect boys from bad influences: smoking, drinking, public houses, bawdy houses, brothels and sex!”
“My God Simon, what were you thinking of? That my son was caught in a police raid on a bawdy house belies belief; and from the report I have received I understand that you personally were caught red-handed in the process of having sexual relations with a woman. Thank God it was with a woman and not with another man, for I understand that buggery is quite common in that den of iniquity you so unadvisedly patronised.”
“You do know Simon, don’t you, what buggery is? Don’t answer me as I can see from your face that you do; but don’t let me ever think that you yourself have indulged in such unnatural acts of sexual depravity. If ever I discover that you have been having sex with another man, then I really will take the skin of your backside; and that my boy is a promise; you would not be able to sit down for a month after I have finished with you.”
And so it went on and on as the Colonel worked himself into an ever greater rage. Simon had gulped as his father mentioned homosexual sex and prayed that his liaison with Philip would never come out. Listening to the tirade from his father he also noticed that a cane and a long handled bath-brush sitting were lying across the arms of the chair over which as a younger boy he had been bent quite a few times to be corrected by his father; and knowing, as he well did, just how severe his father had been both with him and his brother when they were younger, he shuddered inwardly at the thought of what was likely to happen to him now.
But his father still ranted on, asking his son what he thought he was now going to do with his life having been kicked out of school and ruined his changes for Cambridge.
“Simon, I don’t think that you have the slightest idea of the serious repercussions that your actions will have on your future. University is now out of the question and so you, young man, like it or not, will go into the military. I shall try to pull a few strings and get you entered in the officer cadet training course at Sandhurst. You need some stiff discipline in your life and you will certainly get that at Sandhurst; and make no mistake young, man, they still have the good sense to thrash arses hard and often. But if you reform you have every chance of graduating and leaving with the commissioned rank of sub-lieutenant and eventually a career in the regular army.”
“But father, I don’t really want ….”
“Simon, what you want is neither here nor there anymore. You boy, will now do as I say. Now, drop your trousers and underpants and get across that chair there and let me see your arse; I can tell you it needs considerable more attention than Dr. Meredith has given it before you have expunged your sins. Over the chair boy and quick about it.”
“But father, my backside is just still so sore; Dr. Meredith both birched and caned me so hard that I don’t think that I can stand another beating right now.”
“Simon, for the last time; let me see your naked arse across that chair boy. I and I alone as your father I will decide what you can and cannot stand. But make no mistake boy, the fact that Dr. Meredith birched and caned you, as was his duty, does not in any way expunge what you have done and is, in my eyes, by no means an adequate punishment for your outrageous behaviour. You are now answering to me, your father; and make no mistake about it, you boy, are going to get another thorough beating from me. Now, for the last time Simon, let me see your naked arse across that chair; get to it boy, I’m waiting!”
By now Simon was completely defeated and deflated. He realised that it was no good trying to protest. His father had made up his mind and his arse was going to get another leathering. So he slowly stepped out of his lower garments, totally embarrassed to show his nakedness in front of his father, and bent across the chair. Colonel Pratt-Mainwaring inspected his son’s naked buttocks, still highly inflamed and bearing clear traces of the nine cuts of the cane,
“Well son, the Headmaster seems to have done a sterling job on your arse, for which he is to be congratulated. As you still are showing the stripes of your caning, I shall have to content myself with the brush for now. Brace yourself boy, for this is going to hurt”
Simon did not need is father to tell him how awful the flat face of the long handled bath-brush was when it landed on a lad’s naked arse. He had, in his youth, experienced the same punishment several times, bent across the selfsame chair. But in the past it had never been applied to to his backside which was still flaming with pain from an earlier beating. The advantage of the brush or any other flat object, is that it does not cut into the flesh in the way the the birch and, to an even greater degree, the cane do.
And so the Colonel, who clearly wanted to inflict some immediate pain on his son, felt it quite safe to batter his backside, simply to intensify the already severe pain inflicted by the Headmaster. By the time he had finished Simon was completely reduced to tears and the pain in his arse was truly unbearable; but he just had to bear it as there was no alternative.
But the sting was still in the tail of this meeting with his father, who was still intent on making his son suffer further for what he saw as his unpardonable sins. “Get up boy; that will do for today. Now kindly note that ten days hence, which is Sunday week by my reckoning, after lunch at three o’clock, you will again report to me here. And do not come with any illusions, for on that occasion, boy I intend to give myself the satisfaction of applying twenty-four strokes of the cane to your naked buttocks. Simon, I simply cannot tell you how disgusted and disappointed I am with you, my elder son, for whom I had such high hopes; but you have made your bed and you must now lie in it. And make no mistake, Simon, I intend to make it as uncomfortable as possible for you before this matter is finally closed.”
Simon, totally chastened and in extreme pain and unable to control his tears, limped slowly to his room. If ever a boy got his comeuppance, it was Simon-Sebastian St. John Pratt-Mainwaring that day: a day he would never ever forget.
THE END
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