Mr Appleyard was forty years old, dark of hair and eye, and newly appointed headmaster of Dartmoor College. He still played squash regularly, was a crack show with a rifle, held a good degree in mathematics from Cambridge and was reckoned at the schools where he had worked previously to be the man whose beatings any boy who was not entirely reckless would do most to avoid.
The Chairman of the Governors had him and his wife to dinner, and when the ladies had withdrawn, Appleyard and the colonel had a chance to talk over how the job was to be managed.
"Im afraid, Appleyard," said the colonel, pouring himself another glass of port, "that the school is not in the state we would wish to find it. Old Dr Langhorne rather let it go in latter years. You will need to take a pretty firm line."
"I certainly intend to, sir."
"There are a great many improvements Im sure youll be able to make. The food the boys get is mostly dreadful. Theres a good deal of dead wood in the teaching staff, though several of those are close to retirement. And discipline will need tightening up. But I dare say you didnt need me to tell you any of this."
"Not really, sir, no."
"Good man. It goes without saying that you have the whole-hearted support of the governors."
A week later his familys effects were moved into the headmasters house at Dartmoor College and the week after that the boys arrived for the start of term. There was the usual noise and rowdiness, but Mr Appleyard was prepared for this and didnt mind it. He allowed matron and the prefects to organise matters as they were used to, but then he began to walk trough the boarding house chatting to boys, asking them how their holidays had been, answering questions, seeing that everyone was all right. He paid particular attention to the new boys, who seemed to have even more than the level of confusion and apprehension that he would have expected.
After tea he toured the building, talking again to boys, looking into studies, occasionally reprimanding excessive rowdiness, but by and large he thought they were a splendid set of fellows. One of the prefects study doors was closed – remarkable because all the others were open. He knocked and walked in immediately.
The prefect – a tall, open-faced individual with curly brown hair – was sitting in an armchair with a book on his lap. But what stopped Mr Appleyard in his tracks was the boy bending over the back of the other armchair. His trousers and underpants were in a heap round his ankles and his shirt was pulled high over his back, so that all that was visible of him was his slim white bottom, framed by the browner flesh of his legs and back.
The prefect jumped to his feet and his face coloured immediately. "What is going on here?" demanded Mr Appleyard. The bending boy lifted his head to see who this was but remained stretched over the chairback.
"I – I was about to punish Dornan, sir, and thought that a minute or two thinking about what was going to happen would benefit him."
"With a cane, I take it."
"Yes, sir."
"On his naked buttocks?"
"Yes, sir." But now with a good deal less assurance.
"And what was his crime? Something serious, I imagine."
"I caught his bullying one of the new boys, sir."
"Yes. That is serious. Stand up, Dornan." The boys straightened up. He was a dark-haired boy with an open, good-looking face. "What were you doing, Dornan?"
"I threw some of a new boys stuff out of his dorm window, sir."
"Is that what usually happens when you welcome new boys to this school?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I wont have it. Do you understand, Dornan?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Get dressed and go to my study. I shall be there directly to christen my new cane. Off you go."
Forlornly, Dornan pulled up his pants and trousers, fastened them and made his escape. The prefect meanwhile looked more and more apprehensive.
"Your name?" Mr Appleyard demanded as he closed the door behind the departing boy.
"Johnson, sir."
"I want an explanation, Johnson."
"I was punishing him, sir."
"Is it normal in this school for prefects to cane boys bare buttocks?"
"Well – not really, sir."
There was a lengthy pause. "Have you ever been caned on your bare buttocks, Johnson?"
"No, sir." And now his head started to droop.
"I thought not. Now listen to me, Johnson. If boys require a beating with their pants down then I will give it to them, not you. Is that clear?
"Yes, sir."
"I will not have senior boys indulging in such practices. What you were proposing to do was quite outrageous."
"But –"
"But what?"
"But he did deserve a beating, sir."
"Yes, he did. And he will be beaten, But Im not a fool, Johnson. What was happening here had less to do with punishing Dornan than it did with your pleasure. And that is something that I will not permit. I shall write to your father and ask that you be taken away."
"Oh please, sir. Dont expel me. My mother couldnt bear it, sir."
"I think nothing less will send the correct message to the rest of the school."
"Any other punishment, sir. But please not the sack. It was only the once that Ive done such a thing. And Im not the only one to have done it."
"Dont think to excuse yourself by the ill behaviour of others, Johnson. However, if youre prepared to accept the most serious kind of flogging –"
"Oh yes, sir."
"The most serious flogging. I mean a dozen strokes of the cane on your bare bottom. Witnessed by all your fellow prefects. Do not give me your answer now. After supper I shall be meeting the prefects. If you are present at that meeting I will take it to mean that you wish to be whipped."
And with that he turned and swept from the room.
Outside his study Dornan was sitting on one of the chairs against the wall. His hands were in his pocket.
"Stand up, boy," Mr Appleyard ordered. The boy shot to his feet and took his hands from his pockets. "Is this how you are used to waiting outside the headmasters study?"
"Yes, sir," said Dornan.
"In future you will not lounge here as though your visit to me is going to be enjoyable. You will stand and face the wall. In you come."
Mr Appleyard led the way into his large, comfortably furnished study. The boy followed him in and closed the door. Mr Appleyard sat behind the desk and Dornan came and stood in front of it. Clearly something he was well used to.
"I take it you are not going to attempt to excuse yourself."
"No, sir."
"Good. So you accept that you deserve a beating?"
"Yes, sir," said Dornan, and sighed.
"Not, I imagine, the first time you have been caned in this room."
"No, sir."
Mr Appleyard opened a drawer in the desk and took out a rather shabby notebook. "So I shall find your name in here, shall I?"
"Yes, sir."
Mr Appleyard opened the book and reviewed the most recent entries. He didnt have to search long. "Here we are. The 10the of July, Dornan, insolence to matron, eight strokes. And before that, the 8th of July, Dornan, Hendy and Poole, out of bounds, six strokes. Did Mr Langhornes canings hurt?"
"Yes, sir."
"But not enough to stop you from misbehaving obviously." Dornan grinned. Mr Appleyard smiled too. There was something appealing about the boys openness of character. He reminded the headmaster of his own son – or rather, how he would have wished his own son to be, had he survived the scarlet fever.
Mr Appleyard took out his pen and wrote at the head of the first empty page. "My first entry in the punishment book, Dornan." He turned the book and pushed it across the desk so that the boy could read it. 9th September – Dornan – bullying – 3 strokes – clothed. "Will you sign please to indicate that you accept your punishment?"
Three, the boy thought. A let-off! And he signed his name.
"I believe I would be justified in caning your bare bottom, Dornan. Did Mr Langhorne ever cane boys like that?"
"Occasionally, sir, but he never swished me like that."
"So have you ever received such a beating from anyone else?"
"Once or twice from prefects, sir, and Mr Donnelly, the PT master, whacks us with nothing on sometimes."
"I see." He paused, his fingertips tapping lightly together in front of his eyes which gazed steadily at the boy. He was contemplating the obvious state of anarchy that the school had been operating under. No wonder the governors wanted him to make changes. He snapped out of his reverie. "Shall we get on with your beating then?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Hang your jacket on the back of the door there, Dornan, please."
Dornan slipped off his jacket and crossed the room to the door. When he turned again, Mr Appleyeard had removed his own jacket and was taking two upright chairs from the dining table that filled the large bay window and was placing them back to back. Then from the bookshelf he brought a large dictionary and placed it on the seat of one chair.
"Pull your shirt out of the back of your trousers, please." Dornan did it, reflecting that here was a man with whom it would be inadvisable to pad ones trousers, as he had done more than once from Mr Langhorne. "Kneel on the dictionary, please." Dornan climbed on to the huge book. "Now fold your arms and bend over the chair backs till your elbows are on the other seat." Dornan needed no further instruction, but stretched himself over the chair backs which were just the right height to present his bottom perfectly for the cane. He found that his weight was now resting on his elbows and he could feel his trousers pulled taut. Yet more evidence that here was a man who was an expert with the cane.
Mr Appleyard went to the umbrella stand beside the fireplace and selected a cane from the half dozen or so brand new rattans. Addressing himself to the bending boy, he pulled his shirt well up his back and observed that his backside was slim and muscular, ideal for taking a good caning. He lay the last foot of the cane against the taut trouser seat an inch or two below the mid-point of both buttocks, to take aim but also to let the boy feel where it was going to land.
He stepped back a couple of paces and slightly to the left, keeping his eye firmly on the target line, the cane pointing straight at it. He danced in, swinging the cane back horizontally, then whipping it in, full strength, exactly as though he were hitting the squash ball with an unbeatable smash to just above the tin, leaving his opponent floundering helpless in mid-court. The cane cracked like a pistol shot against the stretched cloth. A second later the boy gave a sharp, high-pitched yelp, his head shot up as the spasm produced by the stroke passed through him, and one foot kicked slightly.
Mr Appleyard stepped back again. Across the dark cloth, the cane had left a faint line, lighter, and equal on both buttocks. The second stroke was identical. The boy cried out again, louder this time, and both feet kicked – but there was no attempt to get up or to try and prevent the punishment from being completed. The third stroke landed again on the exact same line of flesh and Dornan yelled as the sharp, intolerable pain was driven deep into the meat of his backside.
Mr Appleyard replaced the cane in the umbrella stand and put his jacket on again. Dornan meanwhile made no move. He knew instinctively that, with this headmaster, you waited for the order to get up.
"Get up, Dornan."
The boy painfully pushed himself upright and climbed down off the chair. Both hands were on his bottom and the pain he was feeling was registered powerfully on his face.
The headmaster sat at his desk once more. "And how did that compare with Mr Langhornes canings?"
"Worse, sir. Much worse." It felt as though the fire in his bottom would never be extinguished.
"Excellent. You can do two things for me now, Dornan. Do you boys like to display your wounds after a beating?"
"Yes, sir.
"Good. I want you to show your weals to all your pals and you can tell them what a whacking from me is like. Thats one thing. The other is that you can tell them from me that I wont stand for bullying of any sort. The new boys are to be left alone. Will you do that?"
"Yes, sir." Mr Appleyard held out his hand and Dornan took it, returning the firmness of the headmasters handshake. Man and boy met each others eye for a second and both liked and respected what they saw.
"Good lad. Off you go now, and I hope I shant have to cane you again for a while."
"Me too, sir," said Dornan and grinned as he took his jacket from the door and went out.
And so it was that within an hour half the school knew that the old man (he was referred to thus out of habit, even though the headmaster was now a much younger man) had made Dornans bum bleed, with just three swishes through his trousers. And the new boys were able to settle into their new school without the rather brutal initiations that their predecessors had suffered.