And end it did. Jack put down the now thoroughly warmed tawse and ordered the boy to stand. Another long silence followed as the spectators calmly took in the weeping boy, his shorts tangled around his ankles, face tear-stained and blotchy, eyes red and swollen, mouth contorted. His hand were dutifully behind his neck .
"Now go to your room. After you get to your room, you may pull up your shorts again. I will be up presently to review your homework. If I find so much as a single mistake, you will be very sorry tomorrow."
The watched as the boy shuffled out displaying a well-whipped, beet-red backside that was already beginning to swell up nicely.
Early the next morning, two giggling girls rang the door bell. Susan ran to let her friends in.
"Are we too early?" Joanie asked.
"We just finished breakfast," Susan replied. "Basil is in his room doing some school work, Miss Walker and Mr. Pryor are in the study. Let's go to my room. I want to tell you about my date with Ronald last week. It was fantastic! First we went to see that film..." Still chattering, they ran upstairs. On their way to Susan's room, they stopped at the closed door that led to Basil's room.
"Let's just have a quick look what Basil's up to this morning," Susan whispered and opened the door carefully.
Basil sat hunched over his low desk, pen in hand, the tip of his tongue busily moving in out of his mouth. He sat on his hard bench and didn't notice the door opening.
"Hey, Susan," Helen exclaimed loudly, "he's got no trousers on."
Basil dropped his pen and turned. His face went a deep red and he pressed his bare knees together.
"Get out," he hissed. "Leave me alone."
"Why aren't you wearing your shorts?" Joanie wanted to know.
"Because Mr. Pryor said so," the boy answered sullenly. "Not that it's any of your business."
"We'll see you later!" Susan said as she led her friends to her own room.
As usual, Basil was to report to the study with his schoolbooks at 11:00 a. m. sharp. And also as usual, he was trembling with anxiety. He had studied arduously and thought he had memorised all the important names and dates, but also knew from numerous previous experiences that it would not be enough. So, with a resigned sigh and a still quite tender bottom inside the brief, tight shorts that he had been allowed to pull up before coming downstairs, he knocked and, upon hearing the summons, entered the study.
He had expected Miss Walker to be there, of course, but he was appaled to see also his sister and her two friends. The three girls were sitting near the window as if waiting for a theatrical performance to commence. As indded they were. A more realistic performance than any theatrical production they could ever hope to see.
"Yes, Basil, I have asked these three young ladies to observe how young boys are taught in my school," Jack said pointing to his desk. Basil's eyes followed the pointing finger and saw two long canes and the thick leather strap lying on the polished surface as if these were the actors who were waiting to step onstage.
"Sit here," Jack said and the boy dutifully sat on the chair in question, close to the desk.
As the girls watched with fascination, the next hour passed with question after question being fired at the boy who sat, squirming, red-faced, on his chair, trying to produce the required answers. Meantime, Miss Walker perused the note book in which Basil had labouriously written his assignments.
An hour later, the boy was drenched in sweat, his hair plastered to his forehead. He kept rubbing his sweaty palms down his bare thighs and shifting his sore backside on the hard chair. At last, Miss Walker stood up and approached the trembling boy.
"Basil, I don't know what I should do with you," she said in her stern voice. "We have gone over this material for weeks and I had asked you to write a simple essay on what you had learned and what, in your opinion, is its impact on world economy and ecology. You have produced drivel. I'm not even talking about your atrocious handwriting or lamentable spelling, but simply about the total lack of imagination, thought, or even the slightest effort on your part."
The boy's face turned a couple of shades darker as he heard the girls giggle.
"I - I'm.. sorry, Ma'am," he mumbled, his thighs opening and closing. "I tried very hard... I did the best I could..."
"Miss Walker," Jack interrupted the boy's monologue, "I see that Basil hasn't done any better in his written assignments as he did now in the oral tests. But I do know what I will do with him. I'm goingto thrash the living daylights out of his impudent behind. Basil, stand up."
The girls now leaned forward in expectation. The spectacle was about to begin.
"What do you have to say for yourself, boy?" Jack snapped.
"I - I - n-nothing, sir.."
"No, I thought as much," Jack said. And to Susan, he went on, "Susan, as you may have told your two friends here, Basil was punished yesterday for his aggression towards you. You may now be the judge as to what your brother deserves as punishment for his sadly lacking schoolwork."
"I would like to ask Basil a question, if I may," she said innocently.
"Of course, Susan. What is it?"
"Basil, Helen wanted to know if that strap hurts a lot. I couldn't answer that question never having had the opportunity of feeling it myself. So I thought I'd ask you. How does it feel? Is it very painful? Is it worse than the cane?"
Basil stood, the palms of his hands pressed against his bare thighs, and went even redder in the face. He was purposely being humiliated and his inner fury was frustrated by the impossibility of his venting it on his sister. With Miss Walker and Mr. Pryor waiting for him answer his sister 'politely and clearly,' he had no choice but to keep his anger in check.
"Yes, Susan. Believe it or not, the tawse hurts. Hurts a lot, as you must know since you have watched my reaction went I got it. As for the cane, depending on how hard each one is handled, I'd say they are about the same."
"Basil, if you can't be polite to your sister, we will have to be even more severe with you," Jack warned the boy. "I will have no sarcasm from a small boy, is that clearly understood?"
"Yes, sir," the boy mumbled.
"Basil, why are the two about the same?" Susan wanted to know next.
Basil looked at Miss Walker but there was no relief from that source.
"Because.. the strap covers the whole..bottom.. and each slap hurts more because the strap keep hitting the same surface over and over... and each time it burns more. The cane... bites deep and the pain is fierce...but unless it hits the same spot...you get a littl respite when...it hits you a .. bit lower.." Basil tried hard to speak clearly even though he was almost choking on each word.
"We will show you, Susan," Miss Walker said. She stood and picked up the tawse from the desk.
"Basil, remove your shorts, fold them neatly and place them on the book case over there."
Trying to avoid glancing at the girls, the boy reluctantly obeyed.
"Oh, Miss Walker," Joanie exclaimed, "he's got a very red bottom already!"
"Yes, Helen," Miss Walker said, "he was a very naughty little boy yesterday, when he hit Susan, as she told you. So of course he had to be punished."
"With the tawse?" Joanie asked this time.
"Yes, Joanie, with the tawse. Just as he is going to be punished now." She turned back to the boy.
"Now roll up your shirt and grip it under your arms so it doesn't fall back down, and bend over the chairback, bottom towards the girls."
Basil was about to say something, changed his mind and, with burning face and ears, and with tears gathering in his eyes, he silently bent over the back of the chair.
"Now, girls, watch. I will apply the first stroke across the underside of the buttocks so it falls on the fold just above the thighs." She raised the strap high and brought it down with a remarkable forehand exactly on the indicated spot. The boy's head shot up as if struck my electricity and let out a sharp cry.
She repeated the stroke exactly across the deep red mark left by the previous cut and the boy yelled again.
"You see, Susan," she said as she prepared for the next stroke, "the second stroke landed right on top the first one and the pain is therefore twice as bad. If I hit it a third time, the pain will be even more."
She demonstrated as the girls intently watched the boy's reaction. They agreed that the third time it must have hurt the boy considerably more to judge by his drastic reaction. He almost, but not quite, raised his upper body as he convulsed with the fiery pain.
"Now then, Susan, what do you think? What should his punishment be?" Jack asked with amusement.
"Well," Susan said, leaning towards her friends again and after a whispered consultation, "how about two dozen with the tawse and two dozen with the cane so we can observe the difference."
Maureen and Jack laughed. "Is that what you call a Solomonic solution?" Jack said.
Then Helen stood up. "Perhaps we should alternate six with the tawse, six with the cane, and so on until he's had his two dozen of each? This way we can see the reaction to each more closely."
Jack smiled. "A good idea. Maureen, you handle the tawse for six, then I'll apply sixc with the cane while you rest your arm."
Basil was wriggling over the chair back. How could they discuss his punishment like that as if he weren't even there? As if he didn't have any feelings, bending like this, bare bottom exposed, all the while they are discussing how to hurt him most? It wasn't fair! Tears ran down his forehead.
"All right, Miss Walker," Jack said, "you start with six of the tawse."
"But he's had three already," Joanie said. Don't they count?"
"Oh, these were just a free sample," Jack chuckled. "Just a demonstration. No charge." The girls giggled.
After the 'first' six were applied with the tawse, accompanied by Basil's orchestration, Jack picked up one of the canes.
"Well, girls, now that you have observed the boy's reaction to the tawse, you will watch the boy's reaction to the cane."
He positioned himself, raised the cane high, and held it there.
"I will place the first stroke on the same area as Miss Walker's first three, on the underbum just where it meets the thighs. That is a good spot for repeated attention because it hurts more and because that's where he normally perches on his hard school desk. Will keep his mind concentrated on why his behind is so sore."
He brought the cane down swiftly and it lashed sharply across that sensitive area. It landed so hard on that already mistreated area that the boy raised his head and howled.
"You see?" Jack said, raising the cane once more, "most effective."
The second and third all landed on that same sore spot and the boy was writhing, trying desperately not to jump up to hold and protect his poor blazing backside. Three more slightly above the first three and the first act was over. As scene one of act two began, Jack made room for Maureen to inflict her second dose with the tawse.
And so it proceeded. After a short intermission, scenes one and two alternated between tawse and cane for the second act. Then another intermission and act three followed. The girls watched, awed, as the well-whipped boy lay motionless across the chair, his backside striped and bruised, gradually swelling up dramatically.
They stood and almost applauded as the curtain fell on a snivelling little boy pulling his shorts back up and being led by the ear back to his room.