The final straw was, strangely enough, not the caning of the whole dorm. Some of them had been messing about, so somebody had to get it. Most of them, even. But Campbell and Pratchett had come steaming in, ordered everyone out of bed and over the ends of their beds.
Campbell started at one end of the dorm and Pratchett at the other and made their way round giving each boy three cuts. So everyone ended up getting six, three from Campbell, which were jolly painful, and three from Pratchett, which made all but Pollard and Hathaway yell. Everybody knew that Pratchett was the champion whacker.
Lawford tried to protest, but Pratchett said he was arguing and gave him two extra strokes. That certainly stopped any other protest there might have been.
So there they all were, lying on their bellies, six juicy weals across their backsides. It was unfair, but then, life in Buller House often was unfair. None of them could say that they had never been whacked unfairly before. And many of them would have to admit that they had deserved it.
But this was different. It had been a full six, well laid on, in nothing but pyjamas, and with a cane. Prefects could only cane for a few offences. Ragging after lights out was one of them, but it still seemed very severe, and pyjamas offered very little protection from a cane.
Next morning, after the worst of the stinging had faded and the array of striped bottoms in the shower had become a subject of hilarity, the general feeling was that they would be justified in complaining to Batty, their housemaster. At least, the boys who hadn't been ragging would be justified. Most of the dorm were happy to admit that they had been rightly, if a bit harshly, punished.
So Potter, Grey and Skelly knocked on his study door after breakfast, a time when he was always there – usually dealing with delinquent boys. They stood in a line in front of his desk and Grey outlined their complaint. They had been doing nothing; Pratchett had refused to listen; they had been unfairly caned. Batty listened patiently, but he looked at his watch a couple of times before all three had had their say on the matter.
"I've listened to your story," he said finally, "and frankly, I think you're spinning a yarn here. The whole dormitory was ragging and Pratchett and Campbell did right to punish every boy in it."
"But, please, sir ...." began Skelly.
"Be silent, Skelly. You're wasting my time, something I will not tolerate. And to drive home the lesson that boys who are insubordinate and who whine at the slightest thing can expect nothing but a more serious dose of their original punishment I propose to give the three of you a further eight strokes. I hope that this will teach you that in this school boys who misbehave take their medicine without complaint." Here he stood up and came round the desk. "Grey, I shall cane you first. Potter and Skelly, wait outside."
The stunned boys stepped out into the passage, leaving Grey to his fate.
Batty pulled a cane from the stand behind the door, and swished it experimentally through the air three or four times. Grey had never received a housemaster's beating before, though prefects whacked him regularly. His face had gone white, but the housemaster was brisk.
"Hang your jacket on the door, Grey, please. Then come to the chair."
Even though he had never been through this before, Grey, like every boy in the house, knew about the chair and how you bent over it. He knelt on it, facing the back.
"Pull your shirt out of the back of your trousers, please. Then bend over."
In a state of shock, Grey reached over the back and lowered himself till he was able to grip the rail down near the floor. His bottom was perched up high and stretched open for the cane to do its worst.
The master hoisted the boy's shirt-tail clear of the target area and noted with approval the taut trouser seat over his meaty backside. The eight strokes were applied with a good swing of the arm, with the weight of the shoulder behind it. Grey yelled a bit and wriggled over the chair back, but stayed in position. He was a strong boy, with a good solid backside, but the eight lashing strokes were very hard to take silently. It was a pretty severe thrashing, the worst he had ever had.
He put his jacket back on and limped out. Potter took his place. For him too this was his first experience of Batty's cane, and his face was grim as he came in. He hung his coat up, went to the chair, prepared himself and bent over. He was slimmer than Grey, but still a pretty solid customer. The master lay on with gusto, landing all eight within a two inch band of flesh low down where Potter would be reminded of them every time he sat down for the next few days. Potter took most of the punishment without a sound but his feet kicked on the chair seat and there could be no doubt about the intensity of the pain he was feeling.
Skelly, the third boy, had been caned twice before by the housemaster. He was slenderer than the other two, though still a sturdy boy, with a shapely little bottom, and the cane raised quite piercing cries when it crossed already bruised flesh, but he knew better than to get up in the middle of a chastisement.
The three boys stood once more in front of the desk, their hands now rubbing at the seat of their trousers, watching as the master entered their beatings in the punishment book. Their entries complete, he turned the book to face them, and one by one they signed their names to show that they accepted their beatings. As far as Mr Newbatt was concerned, the incident was closed; the boys had been dealt with very appropriately.
But that was not how it was seen in the third form common room. The three of them now possessed bottoms that were thoroughly decorated with purple bruise and sitting through the day of lessons on hard school seats was a serious torture. There were few topics of conversation that day beside how unfairly they had all been treated. (It was forgotten that most of them had undoubtedly earned the original caning, and that all of them had probably in the past got away with misdeeds that should have earned them the cane).
And then in geography, Major Cook caned Hendry. Normally, this would have been no more than a couple of handers, but for some reason Slobber was in a bad mood and Hendry was put over one of the front desks and given four crackers across his bum and then stood in the corner for the rest of the lesson.
"I say, chaps," said Hathaway, who was a kind of leader, "this swishing is getting a bit high-handed. It's getting so a fellow can't breathe without having his bum lashed."
"I agree," said Skelly. "Two good swishings in twenty-four hours is no joke. And I bet we're not the only ones suffering."
"My brother says that Pratchett whacked up five of the little fellows yesterday for ragging in the shower," said Hendry. "And he did it bareback too."
Just then a prefect called Evans opened the door and stuck his head in. "Hendry and Skelly. Head of House wants to see you." And he disappeared again.
"Oh _f_u_c_k_," said Skelly. "I bet I know what that's about. I've had three whackings this week."
"Cripes," said Hendry. "So have I, if Slobber put this afternoon's in the book."
Dismally they set off for Patterson's room. Three punishments of any sort in a week meant a trip to the head prefect's study. Not necessarily to be caned, but no-one could remember a boy ever not being caned.
Patterson lectured them for a good fifteen minutes, and then ordered them up to the dorm and stripped off to their underpants. Most prefects would have made them change into gym shorts, as that, unofficially, was the regulation school kit for getting a whacking in. Patterson, as head of house, however, could do pretty much as he wanted, so their underpants would do.
They were both wiry lads with no spare flesh whatsoever, but with clear muscle definition and strong limbs. Hendry was about four inches shorter than Skelly, dark-haired and almost always with an engaging grin on his face – at least it was engaging to his friends; masters and prefects often accused him of dumb insolence. Skelly was blond and lanky. His extremities seemed too big for his body and the front of his pants was bulging with his newly grown genitals.
Both boys were still hoping that he might decide that a gymshoe would be enough, but it was a forlorn hope, and they knew it. He was going to cane them.
Sure enough, Patterson appeared after less than ten minutes and in his hand was the notorious cane he kept on the top of his bookcase. He said nothing, but tapped the rails at the feet of two adjacent beds with the cane and the two boys dejectedly took their places and bent over. He made them stretch as far up the beds as they could and grip the side rails. The beds were quite high and this position left their bottoms ideally set up for what was coming.
He caned them hard, as they obviously deserved. Patterson had no doubt that what he was doing was the only course open to him. Sinful boys like these understood only one language – the crack of a cane across their guilty backsides. He wasn't one of those senior boys who enjoyed whacking the younger ones, either as a form of revenge for all the whacking they had themselves suffered, or because they got a kick out of seeing and having power over young boys' bottoms and went straight off to masturbate with images of taut young flesh filling their brains. No – Patterson was the very model of a virtuous young man with a duty to show the lads under his care the error of their ways. He believed absolutely that his cane was an instrument of the Lord and that to go easy when chastising one of His flock was to fail Him in His Divine Work.
He gave them stroke and stroke about, so that the reforming pain would be lengthened as much as possible. He administered each stroke with his famous skipping run-up and landed every one within a two inch band low down on their bums where it would do the most good. They were tender already and their cries were piercing. Their underpants provided almost no protection at all and it was a full six. Neither boy knew how they forced themselves to stay still over the bed and let Patterson flog them so unmercifully. Or rather, they did know – he'd have started the beating again from the first stroke if they got up.
"I hope that will teach you a lesson," Patterson said when he had finished, but before he let them get up. "The next time you're up to me like this, I shall put you on the Whacking List."
"Something's got to be done, chaps," said Lawford. They were going to bed and had just given Hendry and Skelly's wounds a thorough examination. Blood had been drawn.
"There's too much whacking by half in this house," said Pollard.
"And don't forget school, too," said Jack Dornom. "Every form's got a cane in it."
"Why don't we get up a rebellion?" said Roper.
"That's stupid," said Hathaway. "They'd just thrash us again, or even chuck us out."
"I wouldn't mind being chucked out," said Skelly, who was lying on his belly on top of his blankets, his well-striped backside still on show.
"Yes, you would," said Mortimer. "No-one wants to get chucked out."
"But suppose," said Grey, the quietest boy in the dorm, "they couldn't cane us."
"What d'you mean?" called out Hathaway.
"Well, they can only cane us because we bend over when they tell us to. Suppose we didn't."
"That's stupid," said Hendry. "We'd get sent up to the Doctor, and that means a real flogging. Or they'd just chuck us out."
"But if all of us – I mean every boy in the House, not just this dorm – if we all refused to bend over, they couldn't expel all of us."
"That's a point," admitted Hathaway, "but you'd never get everyone to go along with it. It'd have to be all or none."
"Yes!" Pollard suddenly shouted. "I'm a genius, chaps. Suppose they couldn't cane us because there weren't any canes."
Roper and Hathaway attacked him with pillows and he disappeared into a flurry of flying bolsters and everyone laughed. The idea was preposterous. But Grey wasn't laughing.
"Yes," he said quietly, when the commotion died down. "Pollard's right. We would have to do it in the middle of the night. And we'd have to have a list of every cane in the school and ...."
"Are you suggesting....?" asked Hathaway, aghast.
"Exactly," said Grey.
..................................................................................
It took them three days to make a complete list of every cane in the House and in School. Every prefect had a cane of his own in his study. There were also a number in their common room, for those occasions when boys were beaten for the general entertainment of their seniors. The housemaster obviously had a good collection. Some of the assistant housemasters had them too. In School, there were canes in just about every classroom. The gym had three or four, they weren't sure of the precise number.
But there was a snag. The other two houses would be impossible. They had all visited other houses occasionally, but they had no way of knowing where all the canes were kept, and it had to be all, or the operation would fail. They could just imagine a prefect going over to his colleagues in Roberts or Gordon, saying, "I say, chaps, lend us a swagger, will you?"
Grey was going over the list during prep, racking his brain. He was sure they'd overlooked a couple, and that would never do.
"What are you doing?" the boy next to him whispered. As it happened Grey shared a desk with a fellow from Roberts House.
Grey thought supersonically and thought he saw an opportunity. "Stay behind after. I'll tell you then."
"Stop gassing, you two," said the prefect in charge of them that night, too lazy to get out of his chair to do anything. "Or I'll swish you." Standard response.
The fellow from Roberts House thought it was a sterling plan. He'd taken a full eight from his head prefect only that afternoon and his bum was still smarting. Between them, they decided that the Nigerian chap who ran the wing for the School Colts, who happened to be in Gordon House, was the man to mobilise the final house, because in the shower after Colts practice on Tuesday they'd seen a terrific set of weals across his ebony buttocks. And suddenly the plan looked very possible indeed.
The date was set and everything was ready. It had taken a week to make the full inventory, a week in which a full third of the dorm received further evidence across their backsides that something had to be done. Tasks had been allocated and everyone knew what they had to do.
None of the twelve boys slept; all were awake and waiting for the balloon to go up. Hathaway had the best watch. He kept looking at it, but one o'clock, the agreed time, seemed to get no nearer. They heard the prefect come to bed and then the maids who slept in the top rooms above their heads. Somewhere, off in the distance a lavatory flushed as the last of the masters came to bed, and then there was silence. One or two boys dozed, but Hathaway kept himself awake by making a list in his head of all the times he had received corporal punishment since the start of the year.
There was no audible signal. Hathaway slipped out of bed and touched the boy in the next bed. Silently, one by one the boys got up and crept out of the dormitory. Five of them padded invisibly across the playground to the School building and set about their work there. The rest scattered through the House. No doors were locked; the targeted weapons were easily taken. Their storage places were too well known – umbrella stands, on top of bookcases, in bottom drawers. Even the master who had never been known to cane anybody was found to have an ancient relic lurking in his study.
Twenty minutes later they assembled in the boiler room. By the light of a torch they examined their haul. Thirty-three rattan canes, two riding crops and a large wooden paddle. The crops and the paddle had come from the Head of House's bottom drawer. None of them had ever seen them in use, but there could be no doubt why they were kept, so into the fire they went with all the rest.
Mission accomplished.
.............................................................................
Bizarrely, it was over twenty-four hours before the absence of canes was detected. Not just in Buller, where naturally the third form were behaving themselves as never before, but also in Roberts and Gordon. The little boys of first and second forms were not often caned anyway, prefects preferring merely to whack them up with gymshoes. Older chaps were going through a period of good sense and hard work – it happened from time to time. And the third form held their breaths, waiting out this unnatural calm. It was as though a great Pacific roller were hanging over their heads; they knew it was going to crash down on them, but there was no telling when the catastrophe would happen.
Then, a second-former called McCourt was summoned by Patterson. He had been slippered three times that week, so he needed the special kind of beating that Patterson could provide. Twice before, Patterson had had to administer correction to this boy, but he was such a weedy little tyke that on those occasions the great head prefect had decided a further dose of gymshoe would do. Clearly, he had been wrong; now, only the cane would do. McCourt was despatched to his dormitory with orders to strip and Patterson went back to the Daily Telegraph he had been reading.
After a suitable period, he rose, reached up to the top of his bookcase and grasped – nothing. He stood on a chair. There was no cane there. This would need to be investigated, but not till he had dealt with McCourt. He strode down the corridor and opened Campbell's door. "I say, Boer" (Campbell had been to school in South Africa) "lend us a swagger a minute. Mine seems to have gone AWOL."
"Help yourself," said Campbell. "Bottom drawer." And he waved at his bureau. But there was no cane in the bottom drawer. Nor was there one in any of the other prefects' studies.
With something like panic rising inside him, Patterson tried the masters' studies. They were all in a meeting somewhere, but he knew they wouldn't mind. But there were no canes anywhere. "Right," he announced, with the decisiveness that had led to him being made head of house, "prefects' meeting, my study, fifteen minutes."
McCourt, dressed only in his pants, was shivering beside his bed. He didn't feel as relieved at the sight of the massive gymshoe in Patterson's hand as perhaps he should have done. "Over," Patterson ordered and the skinny little boy draped himself over his bed rail. Patterson took hold of the waistband of his pants and yanked sharply downwards. McCourt squealed in shock. His bottom seemed no bigger than couple of oranges. There was the merest shadow of a bruise on both tight little cheeks.
Patterson hit him ten times. It would have been fewer than that but the kid got up after the first few, so the whacking had to be started again. Patterson left him lying face down on his bed, his whole body racked with sobs, his hands uselessly rubbing at his black and blue buttocks. He hadn't discovered yet that the tip of the gymshoe had drawn a smudge of blood down the outside of his right cheek. But he did know about the small pool of urine at the foot of his bed that Patterson had made clear he would have to mop up before he came back to check.
Not that he would. Patterson had more important matters to deal with.
He despatched his prefects around the house and the school block and went himself to liaise with his counterparts in Roberts and Gordon. They had not yet discovered what had happened – the truth was, discipline in the other houses was a trifle slack, in Patterson's opinion.
The awful truth dawned rapidly. There were no canes anywhere. They were disarmed. Of course, they still had plenty of options available: a gymshoe well applied could reduce most boys to howling banshees. But that wasn't the point. The ultimate deterrent was the cane (even though the theory that deterrence worked by not having to be used wasn't at all understood) and it had been taken away from them.
There followed a painful conference between Patterson and the housemaster. Batty had a cold and hardly knew what day it was, so it wasn't much of a surprise that he'd gone in and out of his study without noticing that the umbrella stand behind the door now held only a pair of umbrellas. But he now fully appreciated the depth of the crisis that now faced them. He spoke on the telephone with the other housemasters. An urgent order for supplies of canes was despatched to their regular supplier, a shop in Holborn: two dozen Junior Viper punishment canes, four dozen Standard Cobra punishment canes, and two dozen Senior Scorpion punishment canes. The shop must have wondered what on earth was going on.
But they would take three days to arrive. Action was needed now.
"I want the guilty boys to come forward, accept their punishment and we shall say no more about it. I would expect Buller boys to own up without any inducement, but in case an inducement is needed, here it is. From this moment, the whole house is gated, and will remain gated until those responsible for this outrage step up and take their medicine." Batty was always very good at this kind of pep talk and there was more than one boy listening to him who was completely innocent, but who almost felt impelled to confess.
And then the furious debate started in the third form. Gating was a terrible punishment and now many innocent boys were suffering it. On the other hand, destroying the canes had been done on behalf of the whole house – the whole school – so now they should be willing to support those noble souls who had done it. But, the gating was indefinite; it could go on for weeks, even to the end of term. But it couldn't go on for ever; if they held firm there was very little chance of them being found out.
In the end there were too many boys involved to hold out for long. A secret shared by over thirty boys can hardly be called a secret at all. The first crack in the wall came in Roberts, the smallest of the houses. One of the eight third-formers confided in his brother who was a sixth-former. Within the hour, all eight were up in front of their housemaster and their fate was sealed: as soon as the fresh supply of canes arrived they would be given a serious thrashing, and in the meantime they would remain gated, while the rest of the house were liberated.
This threw suspicion on to the third-formers in Gordon and Buller. It came as little surprise. Prefects had already noticed that groups of boys were in deep and heated discussion about something. It didn't take a genius to work out what.
"It's no go, chaps," said Skelly, accepting the inevitable. "We shall have to own up."
"Well, I think it's a rotten shame," said Dornom J.
"Me too," said Dornom P.
"We ought to check with the fellows in Gordon before we do anything," said Pollard.
He and Lawford went across to Gordon, and returned half an hour later, breathless and anxious. The twelve lads in Gordon had been promised a dozen cuts on their bare backsides and were gated till the end of term. And suddenly, the affair had become very serious indeed.
They went all together to Batty's study, a mournful group.
"I'm grateful to you for owning up," said Batty, standing in front of the fireplace, "and I'm sure your fellows will be relieved to be released from their gating. You will of course receive a most severe caning, and your gating will remain in force until further notice. The housemasters of Roberts and Gordon and myself have agreed that this is the only course of action to be taken with you."
"Please, sir."
"Yes, Potter?"
"Is it true, sir, that we're going to be swished with nothing on, sir?"
"Perfectly true, Potter. A dozen cuts over the bare breech, well laid on. I shall be instructing Patterson as soon as the new canes arrive. I think you will find that a new cane, with its wax coating still intact, provides a particularly keen experience. But then, you can expect no less, can you? Good afternoon, gentlemen."
The large parcel arrived on the London train the following afternoon and the under-porter was sent down to the station to collect it. The porters sorted the three grades of cane and distributed them to the form rooms, the gymnasium and the three houses. But not before the under-porter, who was only sixteen, was given a taster of six of the best with a Senior Scorpion across the seat of his trousers. Partly, because he had been late for work three mornings in a row; partly because he was new in the job and needed breaking in, but mostly for the entertainment of the three older porters, and because he claimed never to have been given the stick while he was at school.
..................................................................
The third formers stood beside their beds waiting to be beaten. They were naked and standing at attention, in silence, their hands by their sides, chest out, belly in, head up – as the prefects guarding them insisted. The tension could be cut with a knife and several of them felt tears beginning to prick the back of their eyes. Caning on the bare buttocks was not unknown, but rare enough for very few of these boys to have been subject to it till now. Several had been whacked with a gymshoe with their pants down and that had been horrific enough, but not to be compared with what they were facing now. The utter humiliation of standing like this, under the scrutiny of the two prefects made the punishment ten times, a hundred times worse.
"Davidson." They jumped as the first name was called, Patterson's shout coming up the stairwell from the hallway where they were all to be caned. Davidson was a small wiry boy about half way down the dorm. In his panic he seemed rooted to the spot.
"Come on, Davidson. Look lively," said Nolan, the prefect nearest to him. Davidson walked to the door like an automaton. It was beginning.
The silence stretched, with no way of telling what was happening outside the dorm. They were only vaguely aware of all the other boys of the house, also in their dormitories, but stretched out on their beds probably, or reading books, with nothing to do but listen to the unfolding punishment of the third formers and count the strokes of the cane.
It was like an electric shock to the genitals, the first pistol crack of the cane across Davidson's tight little arse, followed by his scream of intense pain. All the boys felt it, stabbing into their guts. Pollard felt sick. Grey's guts were twisting. Potter just knew he was going to blub. Slowly the strokes lashed through the dorm and Davidson's cries became more desperate, more frantically certain that this was more than his flesh could bear. Boys' eyes flickered up and down the dorm, searching for some assurance that this wasn't going to be as bad as it seemed. But no-one could give it.
The silence when the cracks of the cane stopped was worse. They could so easily imagine the whipped boy struggling to climb back up the stairs, his hands hopelessly rubbing at his bottom. Imagine the terrible stripes across his flesh that the cane had left.
"Dornom J," came Patterson's voice again. The second boy left his bed and headed for the door, his face a mask of terror. A minute later Davidson appeared. He was limping and his hands were clutched to his rear end.
"Back by your bed," ordered Nolan. "Attention. Hands off your arse."
Some of the other boys now saw what the cane had done to him. Spread across his small buttocks was a mass of the worst weals most of them had ever seen. He went to his bed and stood there, trying to stay at attention, but unable to keep himself from moving. His face was twisted with the pain and they could see that he was having trouble stopping the tears from spilling down his cheeks.
KRACKK! came the first stroke of Dornom's beating. Davidson yelped involuntarily and the tears came. He dropped his head, sniffing to keep them back. "Head up, Davidson!" snapped Campbell, the other prefect, and the boy did his best to obey. Someone else sniffed down at the far end and several more heads dropped on to chests in the vain attempt to hide the shameful, but entirely understandable blubbing.
And so it went on. After Dornom had received his dozen it was the turn of his twin brother. And the frightful cracks of the cane started again. More than half the dorm now were fighting tears. Despite himself Grey couldn't keep back the shameful tears. There was almost nothing worse, for these boys, than blubbing for a beating, and here he was spouting tears even before he'd been down.
His name, shouted up from the hallway for every boy in the House to hear, was like a kick in the balls. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, but nevertheless intensely aware of the physical reality of his body, the flesh that would suffer very, very soon now, he walked to the door. He turned his head a little away from the prefects so that they would not see that he was crying. Outside on the landing, he fisted the tears out of his eyes and steeled himself to go down the stairs.
Everyone heard him yell for the first stroke, but then, amazingly, he took three without a sound – or at least, nothing that could be heard up in the dorm. After that, his cries merely confirmed what everyone knew: this was simply the worst beating that any of them had endured.
"Hathaway!"
The tall dark-haired boy strode down the dorm and out on to the landing. He was a kind of leader and everyone hoped that he, if any of them, could take the thrashing bravely. From the landing he could almost sense the boys in the other dormitories, listening to the proceedings, enjoying it. The staircase wasn't grand, but when he looked over the banister he could see all the way to the bottom. And there was Patterson, waiting for him, cane in hand.
He set off. The wood of the stairs was chilly to his bare feet, but he hardly noticed it. He met Grey coming up, hands clutched to his bottom, his face wet with tears, which he brushed angrily away as he saw Hathaway approaching. They passed without a word. Hathaway turned to look after his friend. Grey's fleshy backside was striped across with a mass of dark swollen weals. Hathaway thought there was blood as well.
His throat was dry and he could feel his heart pounding. He didn't mind so much for himself, but this was way too tough for some of these boys, he thought. Grey never deserved so bad a whipping.
He stepped off the bottom stair on to the cold tiles of the hallway. He was faced with Patterson, now flexing the cane between his fists, and behind him, the whole sixth form, assembled to watch the fun. Instinctively, his hands went to his groin, covering his genitals, though he had little pride left to protect; the humiliation was almost complete.
"Go to the chairs, please," Patterson said, and that was when he saw what he was going to have to do. An arrangement of three chairs: two facing him, with large bible-sized books on each seat; the third facing away, its back touching the backs of the other two. "A knee on each book, please. Then fold your arms and bend right over."
Hathaway could see before he did it what this would mean. He'd be stretched open, his backside hoisted high and helpless for this bastard's cane. Two more prefects stood by to hold him. This was going to kill him. He climbed on to the chairs. His knees were stretched apart even more than he had thought, leaving his genitals hanging freely between his straining thighs. And then he lowered himself over the chairbacks.
"Fold your arms," Paterson ordered. He did it. His weight was now on his arms, his head down low near the seat of the third chair. Getting up wouldn't be easy, even if the penalties for doing it weren't so terrible, and there weren't in any case two prefects standing by to stop him. They must be able to see absolutely _f_u_c_k_ing everything, he thought, feeling the dangling weight of his balls and the coolness of air on his anus. I hope the cunt doesn't catch my bollocks –
and then all thought became impossible as the first stroke of the cane lashed into his unprotected backside. How long it lasted he had no idea. Did he yell, or did he take it bravely? No idea. How could he stay there in position and allow Patterson to torture him? No idea. It probably took a minute and a half to deliver the twelve terrible strokes, and they were the worst seconds of his life. Nothing could have prepared him for this much pain. It seemed to bleed down into his legs and spread impossibly up into his torso. And when it was over finally, how did he manage to force himself upright? How climb down off those appalling chairs? How make himself shake hands with the cunt who had flogged him? How walk to the stairs without clutching his hands to his arse and giving the bastard the satisfaction?
No _f_u_c_k_ing idea!
The boy limped up the stairs leaving the sixth formers to discuss how he had taken his punishment, how the cane had drawn a little blood down the outside of his right buttock, how his prick had been partly swollen into an erection when he was allowed up (surely, he can't have enjoyed such a beating, can he?).
"Hendry!" Patterson shouted.
The next boy was a good six inches shorter than Hathaway, wire-thin, with muscles like whipcord. He went white when Patterson ordered him on to the chairs but he climbed up and stretched himself to be whipped. His thighs were like the wish-bone of a chicken, his bottom like two white grapefruit. He took the first five strokes without a sound – an amazing feat – but Patterson was determined, and lashed the cane down harder and harder till there was a dribble of blood down his right thigh, and at last he howled as he was supposed to.
"Get up," Patterson ordered and Hendry forced himself up from his strained bending position and climbed down off the chairs. He stood for a second glaring round at the watching seniors and then stumbled towards the stairs. "Hendry!" Patterson's voice lashed out. Hendry turned. The prefect was holding out his hand. Caned boys must shake hands with their torturer. Grimly, Hendry limped up to Patterson and took the outstretched hand. Patterson held him for a second or two longer than necessary and Hendry's eyes flared up at him. He might have been flogged, but he was a long way from being beaten.
"Lawford!"
Lawford had left off his glasses, as he always did for a beating, and squinted round the hallway myopically. He was a well-built young lad with a good chest already and a good bush of hair in his groin. When he was stretched over the chairs his buttocks were firm and lean, his thighs strained till the ligaments behind his knees stood out like cords. Patterson's eye was now well and truly in and every one of the twelve strokes landed within a two-inch band, low down where the pain was as bad as possible. Each one wrenched a cry from Lawford's throat, but he stayed still over the chairs, allowing the whipping to proceed purposefully to its conclusion. When he got down he went straight to Patterson to shake hands without a hint of animosity: he had realised long ago that there was nothing personal in the thrashings that prefects handed out. Or, at least, it was better to believe that.
"Mortimer!"
Mortimer was blond and muscular. He had been crying. The many, many beatings he had earned hadn't hardened him to the cane. Instead he dreaded all forms of corporal punishment. He hated deep inside his soul the humiliation of stripping naked and bending over for someone to hit him. He feared intensely the lashing fire of the cane across his flesh. And he dreaded the exposure of comparing weals with other sufferers afterwards. He was one of the very few boys who would not choose a whacking if offered some alternative.
He saw the chairs and a yelp of terror escaped him. He had never told anyone but he had been beaten like this before. A prefect called Hayward – the inventor of this terrible discipline, as far as anyone knew – had made him strip and straddle the chairs. And he had suffered it for over an hour. Every five minutes or so, Hayward would approach him. Sometimes it was another stroke of the cane, lashing down across his burning backside. Sometimes it was Hayward's hands stroking and probing the secretest parts of his body, massaging his penis into an erection, tweaking his balls, tracing the lines of fire across his buttocks with a fingernail. Once it was Hayward's own penis, hard and urgent, pressed against his helpless lips till he opened his mouth and allowed it inside him.
And now he was faced with the ordeal again. He turned and bolted for the stairs, his eyes blinded with fresh tears. But it was no good. There were too many seniors and he was easily overpowered. They dragged him to the chairs. He resisted, but only half-heartedly, because the force against him was overwhelming. They forced him on to the chairs and held him there: two held his arms and two more, crouching alongside, held his knees, stretching them even wider apart. And then Patterson applied the cane. Twelve strokes, and very hard. But maybe Patterson realised that for a boy like this the shame was worse than the pain and he went a little easier to level out the punishment. Mortimer wailed and bellowed, but even in the midst of it he was aware of all the listening boys and he knew that, yet again, he was failing a test, and he would go on suffering for this for a long, long time.
"Pollard!"
The next boy was known as Nigger, because his skin was dark enough to indicate somewhere in his ancestry a black relation. He was tall and lean with solid muscles under his pale coffee-coloured skin. He went straight to the chairs without waiting for the order, climbed into position and bent over, offering his bottom for the punishment. Maybe because of his colour and an almost unconscious belief that black races could take more pain than whites, Pollard was beaten more than nearly all the boys in the dorm. Two or three times a week normally. Maybe it was just that he was worse behaved and therefore deserved more caning. Amongst the boys who kept a tally of these things he was out ahead on his own for the number of times he had been caned with no more than his underpants for protection.
The seventh stroke made him cry out, and already blood had been drawn by then. Even by Pollard's standards, this was a terrible whipping, and Patterson administered it right to the end, the hardest he had so far delivered.
Pollard climbed down when given the order. He tried to appear nonchalant, as though a beating meant nothing to him, but it was impossible after such a punishment. He stopped himself from rubbing at his bottom, but his face gave him away. He stepped across to Patterson and shook his hand, hoping like hell that his hand wasn't shaking as much as he thought.
And then he was faced with the climb back to the dorm. His feet seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of his body and he had to force them to do what he wanted. The impossible fire in his buttocks reduced him to nothing but the willpower that drove him back up to the dormitory. Once past the first flight of stairs he allowed himself to rub at the awful stinging but of course it made no difference.
"Potter!" He heard the next boy's name called and paused on the landing to rub himself some more and to wait for Potter to come down past him. He soon appeared, a stocky, curly-haired boy, his face scared, his hands clutching at his bum.
"All right?" Potter asked, half sympathetic to his dorm-mate, half seeking reassurance.
"Not too bad," Pollard answered, the reply that all whipped schoolboys gave to such a question, regardless of what they were really feeling. And Potter passed him, on, down into the hallway where Patterson was waiting for him.
Pollard limped into the dorm and took his place once more by his bed, at attention. The sounds of Potter being beaten were already penetrating every room in the house: he was taking it bravely, but already the cane had made him yell. Only two boys remained to be caned, the rest suffered in silence as the two prefects patrolled up and down, occasionally inspecting a striped and bloodied backside. Campbell stopped his patrolling in front of Pollard, standing close to him, face to face.
"Did you enjoy that?" the prefect sneered.
"No, Campbell," Pollard said, in the approved, respectful way.
"Then why've you got such a boner?" And Pollard felt his penis gripped between Campbell's fingers. His concentration had been so focused on the pain in his backside that his semi-erection came as a real shock. He pulled away but the prefect squeezed him tighter, enjoying the boy's embarrassment and humiliation for a few seconds before releasing him and moving on.
"Roper!" Patterson's shout echoed through the house and the dark-haired boy by the bed opposite Pollard's set off to receive his whipping. Potter reappeared, signs of fresh blubbing on his face and his hands rubbing futilely at his backside, just as Roper' punishment started down in the hallway. Potter went to his bed and stood at attention once more, though his head drooped as he tried to hide how much he had been hurt by the cane.
They all heard Roper yell after four strokes, but then it was another four before he yelled again. The last three raised his yells almost to screams and they knew that Roper had received the same as them. There was silence, and then there was only Skelly remaining to be beaten.
"Skelly!"
The lanky fair-haired boy set off. Roper reappeared and his buttocks were horribly striped and he too struggled to keep his head up as he stood by his bed once more, listening to the sounds of his friend's whipping echoing up from below.
And then they had all been whipped. It was over. The twelve suffering boys stood by their beds still, still at attention, not daring to move before they were dismissed. They all heard Patterson's boots climbing the stairs and waited for his arrival with dread. What more could he inflict on them?
"I trust," he started, walking down the length of the dorm, the cane still dangling from his hand, "that that has demonstrated the foolishness of trying to undermine the system. In this school boys have always been punished with a cane, and they always will be. If you don't like it, then don't break the rules. If you break the rules, you will be caned. And nothing you can do will make any difference to that.
"But we have not quite finished. You have all received the same degree of punishment, but I don't believe that you are all equally guilty. Someone must have proposed the idea of destroying all the canes. Someone must have organised their destruction. Someone took a lead. I want to know who they were. And I am going to find out. The boys who planned this outrage and who organised it will receive a further twelve strokes of the cane. Until they own up the whole dormitory will be on the Whacking List.
"I'll remind you that that means that breaking even the most minor rules will be punished with a cane across the bare arse and that you are confined to your dormitory at all times, except school and mealtimes.
"You may put your pyjamas on and get into bed. In silence. I look forward to hearing from the ringleaders in the morning."
The twelve boys climbed gloomily into bed. It was still a long way from over. The light was put out and in the darkness they thought about what was happening. But three of them knew that they would volunteer for further corporal punishment tomorrow morning. Hathaway – because he had organised the search; Pollard – because he had led the revolt, and, surprising himself, Grey – because the idea of destroying the enemy's weapons had been his.
Grey lay on his side, his fingers tracing the swollen lines of bruise across his bottom. Somewhere, far away, his little sisters slept, cuddling their dolls; his mother leant over them, kissing their sleeping foreheads; his older brother closed his books and put his light out before climbing wearily into bed. Grey's bottom was still hurting very, very badly. Tomorrow it would be much, much worse, and there was nothing he could do about it.