Easter. Bob-a-Job week. Two cubs, in very short shorts (I couldn't help noticing) appeared at my front door. I reckoned them to be 10-year-olds, but very nearly 11, and due to go up into the Scouts which would require a different uniform with different shorts. Their parents, I reasoned, had decided it wasn't worth buying them new cub shorts even though the ones they were wearing were at least a size too small for them, showing extravagant expanses of bare thigh.
"Any jobs, sir?" I took them up to a large spare room, full of junk on the floor. I would get them some large black bags and they were to fill them with the rubbish. The job would, I said, probably take them about 45 minutes. They were to take care, I added, of the ornaments that stood on shelves around the room. Some of them were valuable. I watched them for a few minutes as they set to, marvelling at how well their tight grey shorts showed up their neat bottoms and idly speculating, as I tended to do nowadays when I saw boys of that age, how often those bottoms felt the sting of a cane, the lash of a belt or the slap of a slipper. But at that stage, I wasn't, I swear, thinking of the cane in the attic.
I left to my study just along the corridor and carried on working. Later, I realised that I had been aware for a time of a certain muffled, mischievous giggling along the corridor. I was just wondering if I ought to go and see if they were working properly when I heard a loud crash, followed by sudden silence.
I rushed into the room, to find two shame-faced boys staring at the remains of an antique jar that had smashed on the floor. "That was very valuable," I said. It wasn't as a matter of fact, but it might have been. These were two naughty boys and my mind was already turning to the cane in the attic.
"It was an accident, sir," said one whom I shall call Trevor. He was quite tall for his age, with dark, straight hair, and a rather serious face.
"Well, I told you to be careful," I replied. "In any case, there are accidents and accidents. I think you were fooling around."
Neither tried to deny it. "What can we do, sir?" said the second boy, whom I shall call Chris. He was much shorter than his friend, with dark, curly hair and a very mischievous glint to his eyes. His socks, I noticed, were around his ankles, and his legs were quite brown.
"Well, first of all, you can clear up. Then we can decide who pays and how. There's a dustpan and brush by the front door where you came in. Go and fetch them." I nodded to Trevor.
I stared sternly at Chris while Trevor was gone. But he stared rather defiantly back, and there was a faint hint of a grin round his mouth. A boy, I thought to myself, who needed a very good hiding.
Trevor returned and they set to work clearing up. I watched intently as they did so, bending, stretching and turning, so that I saw their bottoms at all angles, as they strained against their shorts. The more I looked, the more I thought that these 10-year-old bottoms were entirely suitable for treatment with a thin, whippy cane. And I had such a cane upstairs.
But first, I had to get them to agree to the punishment. "Now," I said, "when they had finished clearing up. That vase was very expensive. You certainly won't be able to pay yourselves. So will your parents pay? Or your Akela?"
Both looked terrified at the prospect. "I don't know, sir," said Trevor. "How much is it, er, was it?"
I said a thousand pounds, which was then an unimaginably large sum.
"My Dad'll go wild," said Chris. "Mine, too," said Trevor.
"What will your fathers do? A thrashing perhaps?"
"Dunno," said Trevor. "My parents say they don't believe in corporal punishment, but they spanked my brother once."
"Mine believe in it, worse luck," said Chris. "I got the belt last week; my sister got it, too, and she's only 8."
"Well," I said. "Here's what I suggest. I won't tell either your parents or your Akela, and you won't even have to pay. But I will punish you myself."
They both looked relieved. "What's the punishment?" asked Trevor. I think he already had a pretty good idea because his hand was idly scratching his bottom.
"I do believe in corporal punishment for very naughty boys," I said. "I believe in giving their bottoms a thoroughly good thrashing." Trevor was now squeezing his right buttock. "As it happens, I have a cane here, in the attic. I think you should both have six of the best. Do you agree?"
They both thought for a minute, with Trevor now squeezing his left buttock. "You won't tell anybody?" asked Chris.
"As long as you don't," I replied. I was already imagining him bent over, the cane swishing through the air on to tightly-trousered buttocks.
"Ok, I will," said Chris.
"And you?" I asked, turning to Trevor.
"I don't know what corporal punishment is like, sir."
"I think you'd better find out, don't you?"
Trevor nodded unhappily. I left the room and ascended to the attic where my trusty cane waited. As I fetched it, and came back, swishing it thoughtfully through air, I wondered whether this was a case for trousers and/or pants down. At Christmas, I had caned David from up the road across the seat of his Y-fronts, but he had been wearing thick, heavy jeans. The short-trousered bottoms of the apple-scrumping 11-year-olds had been perfectly satisfying targets when I had caned them in September. These boys' shorts were certainly tighter and probably thinner too. If they bent right over, I fancied, some bare bottom would in any case be exposed and a stroke or two could be allowed to stray into that area.
My mind made up, I reappeared, cane at the ready. The two boys stared at it apprehensively. "Which school do you go to?" I asked. They both named a local state primary school which, I knew, used the cane very sparingly. In any case, it was the school holidays.
"Do you both bath yourselves?" They both insisted, with some vehemence, that they did and, in response to their quizzical looks, I said: "Listen, this cane is going to leave marks across your backsides. If your parents see those marks, you'll have some explaining to do, won't you?" So would I, but I didn't mention that. "This punishment, which you won't quickly forget, really will be the end of the matter. But if anyone hears about this, I might still want that thousand pounds, right?" The logic, I knew, wasn't brilliant, but 10-year-olds aren't strong on logic. They got the intended message.
I had already decided to cane them at the scene of the crime, as it were, though I had given Keith, Paul and David their doses in the downstairs dining room. There were no chairs in this room, so I told them to stand at opposite sides of the room and to bend right over touching their toes. This they did and I let them wait awhile while I swished the cane through the air. The anticipation of a good caning, I thought, would be part of the deserved punishment.
"You're both getting six of the best, very hard. You're not to move, either of you, until I've finished with both of you. If you do, there'll be consequences." I deliberately left them unspecified.
I swished a few more times, and then took up position next to Chris. I tapped his bottom. "First one coming up." I raised the cane, high and handsome, and brought it down, flicking my wrist at the last minute to increase the force. Swish! Crack! Ouch! The second quickly followed, and then the third. I was working my way down the proferred bottom, and I knew the strokes were stinging. Chris trembled, but maintained his position.
"Three still to come. Don't move."
I turned my attention to Trevor, knowing that it must be agony for Chris to remain bent over, rear end tingling and knowing that he still had to take another three, but had to wait till his friend had had a dose.
Trevor's shorts were really remarkably short. I wondered how he got into them and realised with a shock that he wasn't wearing underpants. In his bent over position, the shorts had partly disappeared into his bottom cleft, exposing a significant portion of bare buttock. This 10-year-old had never so much as been spanked before, and here was about to get a severe caning. With all this in mind, I modified the force of his strokes juist a little. But having almost yelled the house down at the first stroke, he jumped up at the second and started hopping around.
"I told you to keep still," I said sternly.
"I'm sorry, sir, I can't help it. It hurts so much."
"Bend over again, please."
With unseemly protests, he did so. "Now, you've had two. But I'm going to give you five more, for moving when you were told not to. I'm going to give you them right away, so it'll be over and done with. If you move again, your trousers will come down and I'll give you the rest on the bare seat. Is that understood?"
He faintly said he had understood. I glanced back at Chris, still touching his toes as instructed, absorbing the effects of three cane strokes and contemplating the prospect of three more.
I didn't spare Trevor on the remaining five strokes, and the last two landed, as I intended, low on the exposed area of tender white bottom flesh, leaving neat pink stripes. But I gave them quickly, hissing "stay still" between each stroke, so that he didn't really have time to think of hopping around and the howls of pain from one stroke just merged into the next.
"Right, you can get up."
He stood up and started dancing around as if a swarm of bees had attacked his posterior. I had no doubt that he was very sore indeed.
"Right, Chris, you've been very patient," I said, and measured my distance for his final three strokes. Swish! Crack! Ouch! Swish! Crack! Ouch! Swish! Crack! Ooooouch! The last one had also made contact with bare buttock and I was satisfied that all three had had the intended effect.
Trevor was still hopping around and rubbing like mad. In fact, he had half unbuttoned his shorts so that he could get his hands down the back of them. Chris, by contrast, gave his bottom only a token rub, as if the whole thing had been a bit of a bore. I suspected the beltings from his father were bare-bottomed and quite prolonged, and probably administered with the buckle end.
I told them both to turn round. "Now, just lower your trousers and pants, if you're wearing any [I saw Trevor's ears redden slightly], for a minute, so I can see that everything is all right."
Neither boy questioned why this was necessary. Shorts slithered to the ground, followed by pants. I realised that Trevor was after all wearing pants, in the form of a Continental-style slip, but it was ridiculously scanty. Boys who often got caned or belted, I reflected, would see they wore something more substantial.
I surveyed my handiwork. Both bottoms -- Chris's seemed particularly white against his brown legs -- displayed neatly-spaced pink stripes. It was a fine sight, I thought: two 10-year-olds with well-caned bottoms, dealt with as naughty boys should be.
I told them to pull their pants up and, to their surprise, paid them for the work they had done. As they left, Trevor was still rubbing his tight-trousered bottom very hard and Chris allowed himself a spasmodic little rub now and then. Neither boy would be sitting in comfort for a day or two. The cane in the attic had done its work again.