In 1946 when I was 11 years old my parents went overseas for six months so I stayed with Uncle Colin and Auntie Maggie. They had no children of their own so spoiled me rotten.
One Saturday afternoon my uncle had to collect something from the office. He was a high school teacher and took me with him to the college. He parked his pre-war Morris outside the boarding establishment and told me he'd only be gone a few minutes.
Through a window I could see a man working at a desk. A boy wearing sports kit came into the room and stood with his head bowed. The man spoke to him. I couldn't hear what he was saying but he looked angry. Then the man got up and grabbed hold of a cane. The boy looked like a third former, about 13 years old. He bent over and touched his toes. The man laid into the youth's slender bottom with the stick. Each time the stick landed the boy's head jerked up in the air. After he'd settled back down again the cane cut another arc, slamming into the boy's bottom. His flimsy white shorts would not have provided much protection. The only sounds I could hear were the other boys laughing and cheering on the the nearby sports fields, very different from the ritual being played out on in that pleasant, sunlit room.
After taking six hard strokes, the beaten boy was finally allowed to stand up. He left the room. The man threw the cane into a corner and walked back towards his desk. He looked through the window and saw me staring at him. I dropped my eyes and he sat back down.
The boy walked slowly between Uncle Colin's car and the boarding establishment. His hands were frantically rubbing his backside and his face was very red. Then Uncle Colin came out and we drove back to their place.
I had read the Greyfriars chronicles and guffawed when Billy Bunter got a swishing. The reality looked disturbingly different. It seemed very brutal and not funny at all. I worried because in less than two years I'd be starting college myself. How could I possibly survive a beating?
The cane was widely used at that Commonwealth boys' college by masters and prefects alike. I looked at Uncle Colin and tried to imagine him ever whacking a boy. I concluded he was far too nice to ever do such a thing.
About a month later I was at the college again, this time helping my uncle with some folders he was preparing for a class. It was too wet for sports so half a dozen senior boarders had been roped into help as well. I soon lost interest and began daydreaming. Consequently, when everyone else had finished I still had pages left over. It took them ages to check all the folders, unstaple them and then insert the pages I'd so carelessly left out. I was easily the least popular person in that room.
Then my uncle reached up and took hold of the cane he kept on the ledge of the blackboard. He barked in his best authoritarian voice for me to bend over a desk. It never ocurred to me to defy him. The boys looked on as my uncle administered a firm cut to my small behind. There was a noise like a rifle shot when the stick connected with the tightly stretched fabric of my light summer shorts. For a moment I felt nothing but then a white hot flame set fire to my bum. I jumped up and frantically rubbed my rear. The stern voice bellowed at me to get back down again. No way! I stood there too scared to move.
"Barclay! Hold him".
One of the boarders, a burly sixth former grabbed me by the shoulders and held me down, my face pressed right into his crotch. I could smell his sweat stained trousers. Some big thing behind his flies pressed hard against my face but I did not know what it was. Besides, I had other more important things to worry about.
"If you insist on behaving like a little boy then you will be treated like one!"
Hands undid my braces and my shorts were yanked down. The underpants quickly followed. A cooling breeze fanned my bare backside.
"Hold him, Barclay".
"Yes, Sir!"
Twice more the cane lashed its small target. With no clothing for protection it hurt a very great deal. My poor bum-cheeks shook like two striped jellies. I howled but the sound was muffled because of Barclay's trousers. That big thing behind his flies seemed in danger of bursting his buttons.
"Let him up".
Barclay released his hold and hand tousled my hair.
"You're a tough little rooster", he said as helped me to get dressed.
The other lads smiled in sympathy. Their own backsides had felt the sting of the cane often enough so they knew what I'd endured. I had paid a penalty any boy could understand and now the slate was wiped clean. The stern teacher stopped shouting with that voice he used to quell the Lower Fourth and went back to being nice Uncle Colin again.
The flames which had threatened to engulf my orbs soon dwindled into a warm feeling. I winced though, when I sat down. In the privacy of the bathroom, like millions of schoolboys before me, I checked my bum in a mirror. Three livid weals were slashed across both mounds. The surrounding flesh was a mass of multi-coloured bruises. It took three weeks for my bum to return to normal.
Years later, when we were both adults, Uncle Colin told me that the housemaster who had seen a small boy staring through the window advised my uncle to give me a whacking at the earliest opportunity. The wise housemaster understood boys and was concerned fear of the cane might get in the way of learning when I finally made it to college.
During the beating, time had literally stood still. My backside, and what was being done to it in order to teach me a lesson, became the centre of my small universe. I forgot the watching boys. Words like 'hurt' and 'painful' are hardly adequate to describe what I experienced that day.
I was fortunate that my first beating was at the hands of a man I both liked and respected. He did not betray my trust by punishing me without good reason. Not all boys were so lucky.