WHAT 'it' IS REALLY LIKE..... IF
4.4 YOU ARE THE OWNER AND HEADMASTER OF A SMALL BUT
PRESTIGIOUS BOYS' SCHOOL THAT 'CANES' -
ONE OF THE PERKS....
(CHAPTER 4 - THE AFTERMATH)
There were two interesting sequels to the caning of the delinquent seniors, both of which were reported to me by impeccable sources, which tactfully refrained from allowing any of those concerned to be aware of the fact that their activities had been observed.
The first was a rousing, jovial 'circle jerk' involving the entire Senior dormitory, that evening, during which fire and brimstone were called down on my head by some of the other lads, until both culprits pointed out that they had deserved every cut and could easily have got far more in public AND been expelled afterwards, which quickly restored some perspective to the already very raunchy gathering. This assured me that, at least, the incident had aroused no resentment at all in my two very soundly thrashed seniors.
The second incident took place on the Friday afternoon and again brought home to me the strange, unexpected levels of kindness and compassion of which boys, who often appear to be cruel, unfeeling creatures, are capable towards those who might be expected to be quite beneath their notice and also the extremely illogical basis on which the most intense adulation is sometimes built.
It appeared that, while every senior boy in the school had that day looked his fill at and expressed his sympathy/admiration/horror over the damage I had done to the two lads' naked backsides, the junior school had been obliged to wait until after games the next afternoon, to 'get a look' at the school's two latest heroes, with the result that the ablution block was crowded to bursting point by the time Haversham and Machado arrived and good-naturedly and, perhaps, not altogether unwillingly, stripped and revealed their by then black and blue and still swollen and ridged tails to the very impressed crowd of younger boys.
Among this gathering, not surprisingly, was young Kevin Travers, who doubtless felt a certain proprietary interest in what had been done to the bigger boys, so soon after his own painful introduction to the rigours of, to use the boys' own inelegant jargon, 'getting it kaalgat' [that is to say, on the bare tail].
By dint of some pushing and shoving, he soon found himself in the front row and within touching distance of Donovan Haversham's bare, welted backside. Greatly daring, he had stretched out a finger and very gently traced one of the hard, purple welts running across the older boy's soundly thrashed tail, but was shocked rigid when a big, strong hand had snaked out, grabbed his wrist, and then pulled him out of the crowd.
Also stark naked, as he had just had a shower, and, like many of the others, fully erect, he found himself, blushing to the roots of his hair, standing with the two senior boys, while the others started to laugh, thinking that he was going to be taken to task for his temerity.
Donovan, however, seeing who his captive was and remembering the reports of the youngster's own brush with authority, of which he had heard, without much interest, earlier in the week, took the opportunity to give the little boy a leg up in the hierarchy of the junior school and, probably unintentionally, to acquire, for himself, an adoring acolyte, who would follow in his footsteps and sing his praises long after he had left the College.
Without hesitation, he knelt down next to the terrified youngster, put his arm round his thin shoulders and said, "Hey, young Travers, I believe you are one of us, or, rather, we are two of you?"
Realising that the bigger boy was not angry with him, Kevin relaxed vis- ibly and replied, quite cheekily, "Yes, Haversham, I suppose so." at which Donovan said, solemnly, "All right, then let US have a look at YOU", with which he effort- lessly twirled the slightly built child round until his still darkly-striped bottom was displayed to all.
For a long moment everyone in the room stared at the small and obviously soundly caned tail, until Donovan ran his fingers lightly over the welts that still ridged the curved, faintly bruised and goose-pimp- led rump, felt the little boy's body quiver and seem to melt into his shoulder and then said, quite matter-of-factly, if not altogether truth- fully, "Whew! With a bumful of marks like those nearly a week after getting it, I reckon that, cut for cut, you got the worst whack- ing of the three of us, don't you agree, Mac?" to which Machado, entering into the spirit of the moment, made Kevin's day by agreeing fervently with Donovan's lead and then assured Kevin of his notoriety by adding, "And I believe that you didn't yell half as much while you were getting it as we did, either."
The net result of that single week's 'work' in my study was that the general level of discipline around the College tightened up noticeably. In general terms, few boys are prepared to admit to being afraid of a thrashing, but even fewer are apparently prepared to run the risk of exposing their, possibly bare, tails to one, particularly of the sever- ity which they then knew, at first hand, I was capable of inflicting.
Little remains to be told; the two boys fulfilled their academic and athletic promise and I was, in fact, astounded at the sterling perfor- mances put up by both of them in their respective Rugby matches on the same Saturday, not quite 48 hours after their backsides had been so soundly thrashed, which seems to prove that a healthy young animal can isolate pain from pleasure and draw on either more or less at will.
Young Kevin became Donovan's self-appointed 'assistant', seeing to the older boy's every need, even though this meant his getting up very early in the morning, both winter and summer and this relationship apparently survived both boys' schooldays and blossomed into a genuine friendship in later years.
I, for my part, had the, cheerfully accepted, oportunity to thrash many more bare young bottoms before I eventually handed the reins of the College over to my successor who, unfortunately, is precluded by the laws and attitudes of today, from laying a fast-moving and well-aimed cane across the naked hindquarters of deserving boys and is obliged to find other, far less effective and infinitely less satisfying, methods of dealing with their youthful misdemranours.
I wonder whether the demise of school corporal punishment had anything to do with my own decision to retire from Academia when I did, or whether it was a mere coincidence......?
THE END