After a week I had had enough of the Royal Duke of Cornwall's School for Boys. My first impression had been correct: it was a concentration camp for boys and the guards were the most vicious group of men I have ever come across.
That first day, I met the boys I was now sharing my life with after lessons were over for the day. I was greeted in the friendly, open way that most boys treat their fellows with. Lang, the first boy to get the whacker in the workshop, showed me the ropes and tried over the next few days to keep me out of trouble. One of his first questions was: "Did you get the official welcome?"
I knew exactly what he meant. "Yes," I said.
"Don't worry," he said. "Everyone gets that. Show us your arse."
I peeled the shorts down and let them inspect my wounds. Lang whistled. "Two! He must really think you're a trouble-maker."
"Does he really give two dozen?"
"Hardly ever. A dozen is quite common though, so watch out."
The food at teatime was disgusting. During the meal Lang and the other boys on my table warned me about the officers I had to look out for. Apparently, Mr Francis who had shaved me and overseen my shower, was one of the worst and his strap would come out for the slightest excuse.
After tea we had to go back to the classroom for prep. Of course, I had nothing to do because I had no books. I asked the officer who was supervising us what I should do, but he snarled at me to shut up. He was a bullet-headed individual, who spent the time when he wasn't glaring at us reading a newspaper. He pounced on a boy at the other side of the room who he said was talking. Out came his strap and the boy had to go out to the front, drop his shorts and touch his toes. Four times the strap lashed into him and he yelped a bit on the last one. Then, to my amazement, the boy that he had spoken to also had to go out and receive the strap, even though he hadn't uttered a word.
I sat there miserably. Those strappings were the only relief or entertainment in the whole, endless two hours that we had to sit there. The pressure of the hard wooden seat on the weals across my rear end made the ordeal even worse.
Then it was supper – disgusting watered down cocoa. And then we had to go to bed. The dormitory I had been assigned to had twenty beds in it, high, iron-framed things with straw mattresses as hard as iron. We slept naked and before getting into bed we had cold showers. In the shower room I quickly saw that all but one or two boys had stripes of bruise across their bottoms. Two lads called Roper and Tresize had backsides such as I had never seen. Andy Lang told me that Mick Tresize had been given eighteen with the cane in front of the whole school just over a week ago.
"What for?" I asked.
"He answered back to a teacher and then wouldn't bend over for the whacker."
"And he got eighteen just for that?"
"And then he had to touch his toes for the master to whack him in front of everyone."
"_f_u_c_k_ing hell!" I said.
"Careful," said Andy. "It's eight of the cane if they hear you swear."
"What about Neil?"
"He's trouble-maker of the week. Every dorm has a trouble-maker of the week every week, and they get the cane every night just before lights out. It's his last night tonight."
Just then an officer appeared in the doorway of the dormitory. In his hand was a cane. "Roper!" Neil climbed out of bed and padded down the centre of the long room. The officer tapped the cane against the rail at the foot of a bed and Neil went to it and bent over. His backside was a mass of weals with, as far as I could see, nowhere that a cane could hit him without landing on already bruised flesh. Perfunctorily, the officer took aim and lay into him with the cane. Neil yelled good and loud, but made no move at all – just lay there and allowed the officer to cane him.
I thought it was barbaric, completely unlike anything I had seen before. Certainly a different order of punishment altogether from the hidings dished out by Mr Poole, who always treated us with respect, even as he was lashing the arse off us. It wasn't like the canings I'd had at school, either. There was a complete lack of interest in the effect it was having on Neil. In fact, it wasn't like a punishment – especially as Neil hadn't actually done anything to deserve it. It was like someone would hack the heads off stinging nettles with a stick merely because they were in the way. I don't know how many strokes he was given and I suspect Neil didn't know either. It was more than six though and he was limping as he went back to bed.
I didn't sleep well that night, as you can imagine. My thoughts were all of the colonel and Michael and Mr Poole and of the home I had lost, I didn't know how. I hardly thought of my poor dead mother at all. And then there was the terrifying contrast between that and the place where I was now imprisoned. Not for anything I had done. I could have tolerated that. One of my friends in London had an older brother who was sent to Borstal, and all of us thought it was a real likelihood that we might follow him there and then to jail. But this was for nothing – because my mum had died. I couldn't comprehend the completeness of the disaster that had befallen me, or how it could be seen as fair in any way.
The following day I was beaten with the strap on my bare bottom five times. No matter how hard I tried I was strange to the place's ways and kept making mistakes. There was no allowance made for my newness, let alone for the fact that I might be grieving for my mother's death. The response to my clumsinesses was always the same – "Trousers down – touch your toes." WHACK – WHACK – WHACK – WHACK! The stinging from the last strapping had hardly started to wear off before I was bent over again for another dose. I knew that if I rebelled I would only get it worse and that forced me into going along with it, dropping my shorts and doubling over even though I knew it was brutal and unnecessary and terribly, terribly unfair.
But inside I knew that sooner or later I would rebel. I would not tolerate this treatment indefinitely. And then I discovered something worse. The other boys, those who had lived this way, some of them, for years had had all the spirit beaten out of them. I raised the possibility of rebelling, of refusing to go along with the treatment, even of finding someone, an officer, the chaplain, anyone, who would listen to us and try to get things changed. The only responses I got were blank incomprehension or a terrible, whipped-dog fear of doing anything. Most of my new friends couldn't understand how it might even be possible to do something about the way we were treated: some even failed to understand that all boys weren't treated the same.
But worse was the craven terror even decent boys like Neil or Andy Lang showed at the thought of risking even worse punishment in order to work an improvement. They could see no hope of making a difference and the multitude of stripes their bottoms had taken made them cowards. I was new to this regime and wanted to shout it from the rooftops that I wouldn't be treated like a dog, that I was a human being and I would fight anyone who tried to take that away from me.
But I also realised, somehow, that I would have to do it soon. There was very little that made me any different from the other boys. I too would soon be broken by the endless whackings and strappings and canings.
On about the fifth or sixth day of my stay in the school, Mr Francis arrived in our maths lesson. He stood in the doorway, glowering round the room at us. "Dormer," he called out when he spotted me. "Commander's study. Now." I had no idea what this was for, but I had no choice but to go along with him. My vague thoughts of rebellion had taken no definite shape yet.
I got up and followed him across the yard. I guessed that I was going to be caned, but had no idea what for. The commander had said that the next time I went to his study it would be for a caning, and here I was, on my way.
"I hear that you have been trying to persuade your fellow pupils to refuse rightful punishment from officers, Dormer."
"No, sir," I protested.
"Be silent. I didn't ask you to speak and you have nothing to say that could make a difference. You have been heard generally trying to stir up trouble and suggesting to other boys that they should refuse to be beaten when they have earned it."
I listened to what he was saying, but my mind was racing. Someone, one of the boys who I thought was a friend, had sneaked on me. That was the only possible explanation. There had been no-one else listening. I had been betrayed.
"I will not tolerate this kind of attitude or allow you to infect my school with this sort of mutiny. I am going to give you a dozen strokes of the cane, Dormer, with the certain promise that there will be plenty more if you don't change your ways immediately. Mr Francis."
Before I had fully taken it in, I was held immovably with my head between his knees, my arms twisted so that I was pulled up on to my toes and my shorts round my ankles so that my poor bottom was exposed and helpless. I heard the commander's boots thump on the carpet, the cane whistled and the pain ripped across my flesh. I screamed – and went on screaming as he hit me again and again. There was no pretending now that I was a brave boy who could take his medicine like a man. I howled and begged. My breath came in great wrenching sobs through my gaping mouth. Nothing existed but this ripping pain and the storm of howls and racking breaths that tore themselves out of me. I was leaking from mouth and nose, but I didn't care. I could have pissed myself for all I could do stop myself.
He released me and I was down on the carpet, unable to stand, unable to do anything that required any willpower or consciousness. The howls and the ragged gasps for breath were still retching out of me and my head was down on the floor. I don't know how long I was there like that with nothing in my head or my flesh apart from the appalling injury that had been inflicted on me. But then I was aware of the two men standing over me, watching my writhing. Somehow I stood up. My shorts had come right off but I couldn't reach down and pick them up: too much effort would be needed. The commander hooked them up on the end of the cane, the cane that had reduced me to this howling lump of meat, and I took them from him.
"Don't put them on, Dormer. Wait till you've cleaned yourself up," said Francis. I looked at my hands that had been rubbing at the pain and found blood on my fingers and palms. Oh Jesus, I thought, he's killed me.
The commander dismissed me with further warnings of more cane to come if I didn't change my ways and somehow I got outside into the passage. Every step was a serious effort now and the simple action of putting one leg in front of the other was unbelievably painful.
Somehow I got to our washroom without being seen. There was no mirror, but by twisting round I got a clear impression of what he had done to me. There was a dribble of blood down my right thigh and nearly the whole of my bottom was swollen up into the worst weals I had ever seen. I washed off the blood and managed to stop the bleeding down the outside of my right buttock, though I knew it would start again if I sat down. Even so, I dared not stay away from lessons any longer. God knows what they might take it into their heads to do.
But then, limping back across the yard to my classroom, I had the clearest image of what I was going to do. And it was clear as day that I was going to have to keep my plans to myself. I could trust no-one. Not even Andy Lang or Neil Roper, who had been the most friendly of the boys. Now, their very friendliness made them the prime suspects.
Back in the maths lesson, the master grinned at me and asked if I wanted to stay standing up. I did. None of the boys was grinning, like we would have done at either of the schools I had been to. They knew how seriously I had been beaten. Later, when they persuaded me to show off the stripes, they were full of sympathy and I was grateful for that, even if I knew I couldn't trust them.
I didn't sleep much that night, just dozed fitfully until I judged it was about three in the morning. I slipped out of bed, carried my Sunday uniform down to the washroom and got dressed. I tiptoed down the stairs, carrying my boots still. Amazingly, the outside door was unlocked, and from there it was easy to find a low bit of the fence to climb over and head off into the strange city.
I didn't really know which way to go, except that heading for Cornwall wouldn't get me to where I needed to be. I walked through dark, blacked-out streets, following what little instinct I could muster.
I was walking up a long hill, when all of a sudden the air raid siren went off, wailing into the night. I kept going. But then bombs started to fall. A long way off to start with, but then coming closer. And now it wasn't dark at all. There were fires over to my right and behind me, and now I could see the street I was in. Down by the next corner was a man in a tin helmet, looking up at the sky, where now I could hear the bombers droning right overhead. I turned to hide in a doorway, but it was too late, he had seen me.
"You, boy. Get in here quickly." He ran at me and grabbed me by the arm and before I could protest he had pushed me down the steps into an air-raid shelter in the cellar of some shops. "Look after him, Marge," he said to a woman, and left me in her care.
She was large and looked like the kind of mother I'd have liked to have.
"'Ow come you was out there durin' a raid? Don't you know you'm s'posed to take shelter as soon as the sireen goes off?"
"I was looking for my mum," I improvised.
"She won't be out there, my lover," she said. "You stop in here along of us till it's over."
She gave me a drink, but then wouldn't shut up asking me questions. Where did I live? What was my mother called? Where had she gone? And with every answer I gave her I could see that she was becoming more and more suspicious.
But then the all-clear went and she led me back up the steps into the street. Fires were still burning and there was a smell of explosives in the air. She was holding my sleeve.
"You 'aven't told me the truth, my lover, 'ave you?" I didn't say anything. "You'm from Duke o' Cornwall's, ain't you?"
"Yes," I said, thinking that maybe here was someone I could trust.
"Now don't you worry. You come home with me, and in the mornin' we'll see what's to be done with you. Why've you run off? Get the stick, did you?"
"Yes," I said.
"Well, never mind. I know what them places is like."
A hot drink and a warm bed worked wonders, and I was soon asleep.
When I woke up – I've no idea how many hours later – standing over me was the bastard Francis. He was grinning evilly at me.
"Well, well. Thought you'd run off, did you? Up you get, lad. We've a nice warm welcome for you back at home."
I pulled on my clothes with a heavy heart. Once again, I had been betrayed. But she had looked like such a nice woman. He pushed me down the stairs. In the living room she was standing, looking slightly worried about what she had done.
"I'll use your lavatory, ma'am, before we go, if I may," said Francis, and she showed him out of the back door into a little yard.
"Don't worry, love," she said to me. "It's for the best if you go back. You can't run off every time you get into a bit of trouble."
"Look," I said. "This is what they do to us." I whipped my flies open and shot my trousers down, showing her my bum.
"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed. "What have I done? Here, quick, pull your trousers up. He's coming."
And with the same, Francis came into the room and I was caught.
"You won't be too hard on him, will you?" she said, hanging on to his arm, as though she could hold him back.
"Not at all, ma'am. He'll get the best of treatment." He lay his hand on the back of my collar, as though in friendship, but his fingers gripped my neck and I knew that I was in for even worse than I'd had up to now. He never let go of me, all the way back, and I felt as though everyone we passed was looking at me, seeing me as a criminal, off to face his just deserts.
I expected to be marched straight in to see the commander, but instead he marched me down into the basement, into the shower room where he had shaved me. Once again, he made me strip naked. Out came the clippers and my head was newly shaved, despite the fact that there was only a few days' growth since last time. He even rubbed them over my genitals again, but that was just for his idea of a bit of fun.
And all the time he was muttering and whispering to me about what was going to happen to my backside and I had to stand there and let him do it. I could have fought him, I suppose, but it would have done no good. I was getting better all the time at seeing when I could fight back and when I had to give in.
Then he marched me, still naked, along the passage to a small cell. He unlocked the door, pushed me inside and slammed the door behind me. It was pitch black for a few seconds of real panic, and then the light crashed on. The only things in the room were a hard mattress on the floor and a bucket.
I think I was there for three days. I was fed every now and then. Bread and water, and each time the stuff was put down on the floor of the cell I thought of that time, over a year ago, when the colonel had sentenced us to two days bread and water and I'd gone down and asked him to cane us instead. I had no thought of doing that now. There was no arguing or pleading that was going to make any difference, and in any case my caning from the commander was too fresh in my mind and in the still very tender weals across my bottom for me to think it might be preferable even to my present miserable state.
I lay on the mattress, uncomfortable as it was, and shivered in the cold. Sometimes the cold was intense and my teeth chattered and I felt chilled to the bone. Other times it wasn't too bad and clenching my hands between my thighs worked a bit of warmth into my fingers.
And I knew what I was going to do. They were going to beat me again; that was obvious. Maybe my days in the cells were just to give the stripes on my bum a bit of time to start healing before they gave me some more. It didn't matter. I was going to escape. They were not going to keep me in this place.
"Right, you little bastard." It was one of the officers, standing in the doorway. "Let's be having you."
I got up from the mattress and went to him. He put handcuffs on my wrists and then, incredibly, shackles on my ankles, joined by a short chain that allowed me to walk just in half steps. With his hand on my shoulder he propelled me along the passage, up the steps and out into the yard. Every boy was there, lined up in rows round three sides of a square. In the middle was a vaulting horse from the gym, and standing behind it were the commander and Francis. My bowels almost turned to water on the spot. It was as though they were going to execute me.
I was pushed through into the centre of the square where Francis was grinning evilly at me as though to say, I told you we were going to get you. Without a word being spoken I was pulled down along the length of the horse and the handcuffs were clipped to something at one end. There was a murmur of voices and then officers ordering silence. Then I felt the shackles being pulled tight and fastened. I was stretched over the end of the horse, with my backside exposed helplessly. I could almost feel all those eyes focussed on my poor wounded rear end.
"I will not tolerate absconding." The commander was behind me but his voice carried to the four corners of the yard. "You are here for your own good and protection. To run off is one of the most serious offences a boy can commit. Therefore, you are assembled here to witness what happens to boys who run away. Dormer, for absconding the sentence is a dozen strokes of the birch. Carry on, Mr Francis."
Francis moved aside and I saw a bucket from which protruded two bunches of long twigs. He picked one out and held it so I could see it; he was kind of showing it to me to make me more afraid. It worked. The twigs were about three feet long and bound together at one end into a sort of handle. There seemed to be about a dozen separate switches, but at the business end they split into any number of thin twigs and sprayed out quite stiffly till they were about six inches wide at the tips. I went cold. Every stroke would cover the whole of my backside. Francis shook the water off and then thrashed the birch through the air, letting me see it and hear it through the air. Then he moved round behind me and I knew it was going to begin.
First, he caressed my bottom with the twigs, letting me feel them on my helpless skin. Then they went away and I sensed him stepping back so he could take a full swing at me. There was utter silence, as though everyone was holding their breath. I heard his boots scrape on the hard surface and then thump down. There was a soft swishing sound like trees in the wind and then an almighty thud as the birch hit me.
I can't describe the pain of that first stroke. It was like fire, covering my bottom and consuming it, but then going on and on. The most intense, soul-searching burning pain. And I was suffering it here, out in the open, under the eyes of a couple of hundred boys and their jailers. Someone called out, "One."
The second landed on the same broad swathe of flesh. Impossibly, the pain doubled. Someone screamed. And in the midst of my agony, someone different counted "Two."
It was as though the individual twigs fell on me greedily seeking out a fresh bit of skin to flay. And every one took a piece of me. The slow, counted out doses of agony burned me up, flayed off my skin and pierced right into the meat of my body.
After six he threw down the birch and picked the second one out of the bucket. I had to watch as he shook off the water and then thrashed it through the air in front of me, as though to say, "You're only half way through, you little _s_h_i_t_, and now I'm going to kill you." I've no idea how long it took to deliver the twelve fearsome strokes to my poor lacerated backside. It seemed like a lifetime and all the time the pain was spreading and deepening and filling my body with fire.
The counting and the screaming stopped, but the fire burned on and on. The second birch was thrown down with the other where I could see them. The other boys were dismissed and driven off the yard, until I was there alone, still stretched over the horse, still burning. Francis came to my head and lifted it by one ear.
"Did you enjoy that, Dormer?"
"No, sir," I croaked.
"I did," he whispered. "There's nothing I like better than a boy stripped off over the horse and having a good strong birch to make him sing. You should see your arse now, you little cunt. A right picture, it is. You run off again, and you'll make my day." His hand was on my bottom and his fingers pulled at something that was stuck to me. I discovered later that it was a piece of twig that had pierced the skin and was still there. He opened his palm right in front of my face. "Your blood, Dormer. I love it when I get the chance to draw a little blood from a boy who's got too much of it. And I'll be watching for the chance to take some more of yours. Understand me?"
I said nothing, and for once that seemed enough for him. He left me there for over an hour, stretched over the horse with my lacerated backside on view to anyone who passed by – not that many did. The burning nightmare that my backside had been turned into hardly diminished at all in the whole hour, but it was kind of peaceful lying there on my own, the cool air blowing over my skin and providing what little comfort that was available to me. And deep inside me, burning even fiercer than my rear end, was the utter determination not to stay in this hell-hole.
I played over in my brain all the possibilities for escape – where I could go, how I could live, how avoid recapture – at all events to avoid recapture. They were never again going to bring me back and flog me in front of everyone. That was never going to happen again. During that hour, shackled to the vaulting horse, with my arse lacerated by the birch and spread out for the world to see, I stopped being a little boy and set out on the long painful march to manhood.
I was released at last, allowed to hobble off to the washroom and clean myself up. I discovered the bits of twig now embedded in my flesh and managed to get most of them out. I swabbed off the blood as best I could and finally, for the first time in three days, gingerly pulled on some shorts and a shirt. When the other boys returned from lessons they were full of sympathy and did their best to make me feel better. I was grateful for their concern, but never forgot that one of them had sneaked on me, was responsible for what had happened to me. I didn't try to find out which one it was, or reveal that I knew that I'd been ratted on – I couldn't waste that amount of energy, I was saving myself for what I knew I was going to do next.
None of them asked to see my wounds until we were showering that night before bed. Then they were horrified and fascinated in equal measure. They had never seen anything like it.
I lay in bed, staring into the darkness, waiting, and gradually all the noises of the place died away. I had weighed it up carefully. If I did nothing till my bottom was healed, they'd beat me some more and I'd start to fall into the place's trap. If I went tonight, I might not be strong enough to keep clear of them all. But they wouldn't be expecting me to run off immediately after a flogging; I'd be catching them off guard.
I slipped out of bed and pulled on my shirt and shorts. My Sunday uniform hadn't been returned to me yet, so I was left only with the normal inadequate clothing to go in. I almost expected the place to be locked up after my escape attempt, but getting out was just as easy the second time. I closed the gate and set out into the night.
Once again there was an air raid, but this time I made sure that I wasn't seen. Back at the home I knew all the boys would be herded down into the cellars that served as the bomb shelter. They would realise that I was gone because they always took a roll call. But as long as the raid lasted they couldn't come after me, so I kept going, urging the Germans on to send more planes, drop more bombs. I sneaked down back streets and crept through the shadows. Once, a bomb landed less than two streets away and I jumped, but then I kept going.
In a small street of little houses, I found a back yard where washing had been left out on the line. There was a boiler suit. I had to roll up the sleeves and the legs, but at least it was warmer. I kept going. Kept going. Kept going. The stiffness dropped out of my legs and arms and the pain in my backside with each step got less and less. I was almost enjoying myself.
By daybreak the all-clear had still not gone off. Thank you, Goering, I said to myself, over and over, in the rhythm of my feet on the pavements. And I was almost on the edge of the city. As soon as I saw the barn at the edge of one of the first fields I came to, I realised how tired I was. I was in luck. There was a great pile of hay and I was asleep, hidden beneath armfuls of the stuff, within five minutes.
I slept most of the day and then, carefully, set out again. I stole some bread from a delivery boy's bike, and, my God, it tasted good. It rained just as dark was falling so I sheltered in another barn. It wasn't as comfortable as the first one, but it was good enough and I slept some more. Then woke and set off again.
I walked until I was well clear of the city, and then I walked some more. I walked until I was sick of it, discouraged and tired. There had been no sign of anyone from the home looking for me, nor of policemen, or anyone else representing danger. But this didn't mean that I was about to drop my guard.
But then an extraordinary thing happened.
I was trudging up a long hill and feeling pretty low and disheartened. I must have been preoccupied with thinking because I didn't hear a vehicle till it had stopped right beside me. A shock of fear ran through me and I was instantly ready to run. But it was an American soldier. He seemed like a creature from another planet.
"Hi, kid," he said. "Where ya goin'?"
I gave him the name of a village about five miles away from where I really wanted to be.
"Hop in. I'll take ya."
"I don't know," I said.
"It's thirty miles. Ya wouldn't rather walk, I take it."
So I took a huge chance and got into his jeep. I winced as I sat on the hard passenger seat; my backside wasn't ready for this. And then he drove off. Every bump in the road – and there were plenty – was torture. But I gritted my teeth and tried to look normal. He chatted away as though there was nothing wrong, but I was sure he had noticed that I was in pain. He was called Chuck. I thought maybe all Americans were called Chuck – except Laurel and Hardy. And he was from Little Rock, Arkansas. He tried to explain where that was, but he might as well have been describing somewhere in outer space. He casually gave me a Hershey bar and I nibbled at it. It was the first chocolate I had eaten for more than two years and I wanted it to last, just as I wanted this help to be genuine, for him not to give me away, though I suspected he would try and I would have to run for it sooner or later.
"Say, kid. What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"You got a sore butt, or something?"
"What?"
"Your tail, your rear end. You're wincing every jolt we take."
"No, it's all right."
"Listen, son, you don't grow up in Arkansas with a paw who takes a hickory switch to your rump every five minutes without knowing what it's like to sit on a sore butt. So, what sort of trouble are you in?"
I didn't reply. I had just suffered the consequences of trusting someone too easily and I wasn't about to risk it again, just because he said his dad whacked him and he knew what I was going through.
"My guess is you've run off from somewhere. You obviously stole that suit-thing you're wearing. You're terrified I'm going to turn you in. Well, I have to be back at my camp by supper time. I ain't about to turn round and take you back to Plymouth, even if I wanted to."
I still said nothing. He might be genuine. He might not. My hand was on the side of the jeep ready to make a leap for it.
"My old man used to take me out to his tool shed in the yard and I'd have to take my britches off while he cut him a switch. Then I'd have to lie over the saw-horse and he'd whale my butt till the blood was running. And I'd run off and he'd fetch me back and whale me some more."
Maybe it would be all right if I told him. Maybe he wouldn't turn me in at the next police station.
"And on top of that, we had these teachers at school and they just delighted in laying the paddle across our rear ends. The football coach was the worst bastard. Once I remember he lined up the whole of our team, naked as jay-birds, and he gave each of us a dozen pops of the paddle on our bare rumps. That was a real hiding. If you ain't felt a maplewood paddle on your bare butt, you ain't lived, I tell you. After that I run off and I didn't go home and I didn't go to school for a month. I just lived out in the woods. An' I told myself then that if ever I could help a runaway, I'd do it, even if it was my real duty to take them back. What did you get hit with?"
"A birch," I said.
"A which?"
"It's like a dozen switches off a birch tree tied up together. And they did it on my bare backside and in front of everyone. And it was twelve strokes." There – I'd told him. Now I was going to have to run for it. He said nothing for a long while.
"What d'you do to get yourself a whippin' like that?"
"Ran away."
"And why d'you run off?"
"'Cause he caned me. For nothing. And that was twelve on my bare backside too."
"Jesus, kid. You ain't learning, are you? I bet your butt is a picture."
"It is," I said. "I'm not going back."
He said nothing for nearly a mile. "Well, kid, here's the deal. Where are you going to go to?"
I told him about the colonel and the house where I'd been evacuated and he listened and I could tell he understood. And I told him about the boys' home and why I'd been taken there, and how they treated all the boys there, and then I repeated that I wasn't going back.
"Right. I'll take you to this colonel's house. I guess it ain't far out of my road. You're welcome to any help I can give you. But I'd sure like to see your butt after whippin's like you've taken."
"All right."
He pulled off the road. We both got out and I climbed out of the boiler suit, dropped my shorts and bent over a bit so he could see.
"Sweet Jesus!" he whistled. "Are they allowed to whip kids like that in this country?"
"They did it anyway," I said.
I directed him to the village and then up the lane towards the colonel's gate. But then my heart almost stopped and my blood went cold. There was a black Vauxhall parked opposite the gate and I could see two men in it. I was pretty sure that one of them was Francis.
They had come for me.