Castlerock school for boys served a rural community. It was a warm summer's day and Form 3B were waiting for Music Appreciation to begin on 'Broadcast to Schools'. Mr Chambers fiddled with the tuning nob on the sturdy wireless but the signal was very weak.
"Smith! Grab hold of the aerial wire and stand beside the window".
The curly-headed 12 year old did as he was told but the signal was still fading. Mr Chambers gave Smith a chair to stand on and the sound boomed in. The teacher sat at his desk and marked exercise books. The class listened with varying degrees of attention to the announcer with a plum in his voice. Then the music started. It was Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite'. The boys had started to laugh when the title was announced but were quelled by a frown from their teacher.
The human aerial was also the class clown. The music and his elevated position became too much for him. He started to perform a parody of a ballet dancer. His mother, who had dragged him along to see Moira Shearer in the film 'Red Shoes', was really to blame for what happened next. Smith attempted to stand on his toes like a ballerina and promptly fell off the chair. Fortunately the aerial wire detached itself from the wireless without causing any further damage. Valves were expensive to replace and still hard to
get so soon after the war.
"Wretched boy!" Mr Chambers shouted. He had faced the enemy at Tobruk but balked at fiddling with the innards of the wireless. The science teacher would repair the set later. Mr Chambers was very angry with young Smith.
"Out the front" he bellowed. Smith obeyed. The teacher picked up a thin whippy rattan cane. "Unbutton and bend" he ordered the hapless lad. His back to the class, young Smith released his braces and the shorts fell to the floor. He pulled down his underpants and bent over. Thirty pairs of eyes inspected Smith's small, hairless bottom - none too clean because it was Thursday and 'bath night' was Saturday.
Mr Chambers raised the stick and slashed it across Smith's buttocks.
"Aaagh!"
'One', the class silently counted.
"Oh....oh...Aaaagh!".
'Two'.
"Please ..no more ... Aaaagh!"
'Three'
"Ow....please sir.. I'll be good... Aaaaagh!"
'Four'.
"No good writhing like that, boy!" the teacher shouted.
"AAAAGH!"
'Five'.
"oh...ow.. ow..oh...not another one...please... AAAAAAAAAGH!"
'Six'.
"Now get back to your desk".
Mr Chambers told the class to read a chapter of a text book: "Life in Ancient Rome". Meanwhile Smith had got dressed and dragged himself back to his seat. The other lads having watched the six crimson weals spring up on his tender flesh, felt sorry for him. Tears streamed unchecked down poor Smith's face as he sat hunched at the desk, his small bottom on fire. Later in life Smith was to discover there are worse things to get over than a sore backside. Meanwhile, the teacher was satisfied order had been restored to his classroom.
One of the boys who had observed the flogging was young Percy Davit. Percy had suffered from infantile paralysis when he was younger. Luckier than most polio victims, he was now able to walk with the help of leg braces. It was to be many years before a vaccine was discovered. Whenever an outbreak ocurred, schools were closed as were swimming pools and picture theatres to prevent the spread of the disease.
Percy had great character but not being able to play sports or swim with the other lads was upsetting for him. He longed to be just a regular boy. This troubled him a lot.
After school Percy was putting books away in his locker. A prefect came in and looked around him.
"Have all the others gone home?" the prefect asked Percy.
"Yes" the boy replied, acutely conscious of his high pitched voice. He was the only lad in his class whose voice had not yet broken. Another prefect came into the locker room and said to his colleague: "We've rounded them all up. Better get started". Without so much as a glance at young Percy, both senior youths hurried off towards the classroom block.
Percy suddenly remembered the head prefect announcing at Assembly earlier in the day that an honour beating was to be given after school. Castlerock had played St Bedes at cricket the previous afternoon. There had been a very minor scuffle between boys from the two schools. The prefects decided to punish the lads responsible by putting them on their honour to come forward and take a beating.
Young Davit blushed to the roots of his curly black hair. Those prefects hadn't even bothered to round up the 'cripple'. No matter that during the skirmish Percy had been on the sideline applauding the players. What made him so upset was the way those senior boys had ignored him. It was as if he hadn't even been there. Percy thought for a moment before closing his locker and then slowly making his way towards the classrooms.
A queue of about thirty boys stood silently in the corridor. As Percy joined them, four prefects each carrying a cane walked along the line and took up their station in separate classrooms. The prefect in charge of marshalling the lads sent in the first four. The unmistakeable thud! of cane on boy-flesh was soon heard.
"They're giving six!" a boy near Percy said.
"On bare!", said another as one boy walked out of a classroom still buttoning up his braces. The lad's face was white and stained with tears.
Percy who of course had never been caned started to feel a bit apprehensive. The fearful sounds continued and were frequently punctuated by howls of distress. Percy had put up with considerable pain during the months spent in hospital. His crippled limbs were manipulated by nursing staff to prevent atrophy. Male attendants administered enemas which young Percy found most humiliating. Yet all that had been done in a desperate attempt to reverse a disease - unlike caning in which a boy was deliberately hurt in order to teach him a lesson.
The four prefects certainly kept the line moving. Soon it was down to the last few boys. The marshalling prefect told them to undo their buttons to save time. When it was Percy's turn he had to hold up his pants which were too big for him. The classroom door closed behind Percy and he faced his punisher.
As luck would have it, the prefect was David Butcher, captain of the Rugby XV and already bigger than most men. Another prefect might have been lenient with a disabled lad but not Butcher. He told Percy to undress and bend over a desk. When the boy was in position the prefect promised him 'six real stingers'. Percy's poor bare bottom quivered at the thought of them.
Butcher whispered to the frightened boy: "Yell if you want. That'd be music to my ears".
The prefect stood to the left of the boy. He swung the stick so it landed on the very tender underside of the boy's tiny orbs. Percy shuddered at the pain being inflicted. Time stood still for the boy. He was totally at the mercy of the prefect. The next hard cut landed on the crown of Percy's buttocks, the tip of the cane slicing a painful crater in his right cheek. Percy bit his lip to stop from crying out.
Butcher waited until the boy was still before unleashing three hard strokes in quick succesion. Percy bucked as waves of savage pain engulfed his nether regions. His obvious distress left the big, burly prefect quite unmoved. Butcher delivered the coup-de-gras: a powerful diagonal stroke which cut a fiery new path through the forest of raised weals.
"Pants up".
Slowly Percy got to his feet, pulling his underpants and shorts up with him. He looked at Butcher through his tears. The prefect bent down and ruffled Percy's hair.
"Well done, young 'un! Not so much as a peep out of you - no matter how hard I tried to 'tickle' your backside". The prefect's praise was genuine.
"I know you're a crippled lad", the big prefect continued, "But you wouldn't have taken it too kindly if I'd treated you any different than the other boys. The cane is supposed to sting and I reckon it did that all right. If that had been me at your age I'd have yelled the place down. So, what do you say?"
Percy's sobs had turned to hiccups but he soon found his voice: "Th-a-nks, But-ch-er".
"Good lad. Now get off home".
The prefect opened the door. Percy walked along the deserted corridor and out into the sunshine. Butcher returned the cane to his common room. When he told the other prefects he'd just beaten young Davit, surprise, even anger was reflected in their faces.
"I know what you're thinking", Butcher continued, "about him being a cripple but, I'll tell you what, Davit was the only lad there who thanked me for striping his bum. Reckon he was grateful".
That night, Percy Davit slept on his tummy. Towards morning, he experienced his very first wet dream - the beating from Butcher having given Mother Nature a helping hand. The youngster smiled and then went straight back to sleep.