Davey took his jacket off and hung it up. His hands were shaking and he felt as though his legs wouldn't hold him up. When he turned to the chair the headmaster had spread over it a rubber sheet and was now placing over that a bath towel. Somehow that made the prospect before him even worse.
"Lower your trousers."
His fingers had all turned to thumbs, but somehow he unhooked the clasp of his belt and unbuttoned his flies. He eased the trousers over his backside and let them fall to the floor, shocked by the sudden draught of air on his legs.
" And your underpants."
This was harder but he knew it had to be done. He hooked his thumbs into the elastic, pushed down and shivered as his recently shaved genitals came free.
"Down to your ankles."
He had to stoop to push them down and it was the hardest thing he had done in his life, but then he was ready and he was so aware of his testicles between his thighs and he hoped desperately that the old man wouldn't see that he had been shaved.
"Now bend over - the way you saw the others do it." He lowered himself over the chair back and gripped the ends of the arms that seemed so far away that it stretched him tightly.
"Head right down into the seat, boy." Oh, how he hated to be called 'boy', as though he had no name at all. But he forced himself to bend further, feeling the flesh of his bottom pull tighter. Then his shirt tail was hoisted high over his back and he gasped at the sudden feeling of nakedness from his ankles all the way up to the middle of his back.
The headmaster considered the naked boy he was about to beat. A good strong boy with a solid little backside, ideal for taking a caning. Tanned back and legs, so an outdoor type. Probably a bold, mischievous boy, so well used to corporal punishment, but no signs of any recent whackings. He'd not be so bold or mischievous after a dozen with his pants down. And that would teach him to smoke and lie to his headmaster.
The head signalled to Patterson and the prefect came round to the boy's head, knelt on the chair's seat and lay his hands either side of his torso, just holding him lightly in position. This was going to be hard. The head lay the last foot of the cane across the target, letting the boy feel where it would land, about half way down his bottom. He stepped back a foot or so, swung the cane back till it was poised behind his head; then whipped it in, fast and hard, almost horizontal; it sang through the air and cracked like a pistol as it connected with the bare flesh, exactly on the line aimed for.
The boy's head shot up and a cry escaped from his mouth. The headmaster was unmoved. After caning hundreds of boys and young men in his career, no amount of bawling could affect him. Of course the boy was in pain: that was what a caning consisted of. It would do him no lasting damage. And his offences were very serious. The second landed a precise half inch lower, the two scarlet weals almost touching. The boy's head jerked up again, but no sound beyond a suppressed gasp came from him. The third was a little lower again, widening the band of pain across both suffering buttocks. The next three repeated the pattern, landing lower and lower across the most sensitive parts, transforming the white skin to angry red lines that were already turning purple.
Six! He had taken six and it seemed that the whole of his bottom had been dissolved in molten fire. But still the word to get up did not come. Somewhere, a mile away, he heard the canes clicking m the umbrella stand. Maybe it was over after all.
" And now, Davey, you will see what happens to boys who lie to me." Patterson's hands on his ribs gripped a little firmer, and he heard the old man's boots almost dancing on the carpet a millisecond before the cane crashed into him and the world became an inferno of raging fire and agony. It was impossible to survive so much pain. He was aware of nothing but struggling against Patterson's hands and the awful, shocking, brain-searing pain across his backside. He had no idea whether he yelled or not; wasn't yet aware of how his feet had kicked half free of his trousers as three, four more searing strokes lashed into him.
The headmaster looked at what he had done. The whole of the lower half of the boy's buttocks was a mass of multi-coloured weals. The first six parallel lines of bruise were now overlaid with four vicious stripes that crossed them at an angle, breaking the skin where they crossed, leaving beads of blood on the lacerated skin.
A beating to remember, he thought. But enough for now. The full dozen was for another day.
"Get up," he ordered. Patterson released his hold on the boy's torso, and he lay there, hardly able to move for the pain that had been inflicted on him. The only sensation in his body was this intense, impossible burning in his rear end. He was reduced to these two suffering muscles. Something helped him to straighten up and he found it was Patterson's hands on his shoulders. He wanted to put his hands to his bottom, to rub away, erase the terrible pain he was feeling, but he couldn't. His muscles wouldn't obey his brain.
"I hope that will be a lesson to you, boy"
"Yes, sir," he managed to say, and in saying it realised that he had survived his first beating, and he had done it without blubbing. He knew that he had yelled, but the tears which hovered behind his eyes had not fallen.
"Good. Get dressed, please." And now he found that he could move, but it was terribly hard to stoop and force his shoe back through the leg of his trousers. He pulled up his pants, easing the elastic carefully over the wounds across his backside. Then his trousers, and the intense heat of the beating seemed magnified by the pressure of the cloth. He fastened his buttons and belt, and then his hands did go to his bottom, rubbing at the unbelievable pain. He fetched his jacket from the door and put it on, then stood in the line with his friends, waiting to be dismissed.
They watched as the old man sat behind his desk once more, laying the cane across the muddle of papers; saw him fetch the punishment book from its drawer, take his pen out of his pocket, unscrew the top, carefully write the date, their names, their offence, the number of strokes - the clinical details of their beatings. He turned the book to face them and they had to step forward one by one and sign their names. Davey was last again. 'Smoking and lying' he saw, and then against '10 strokes, bare breech' he signed his name, M Davey, and the deed was done. Ten! It had seemed like more. The old man came round the desk again. This time he was holding out his hand. As each boy shook hands with him he said the name, establishing normal relations with him. "Poole - Dorney - Scully - and Davey." He held Davey's hand longer, not letting him go. "I don't want to beat you like that again, Davey. You understand ?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Off you go." Patterson was holding the door open and they could escape into the passage. In silence, still rubbing themselves, they headed for the washroom. There the damage could be examined properly. Scully, Dorney and Poole had spectacular sixes across their lean backsides, but their exclamations and the spots of blood in his pants told Davey how terrible the sight of his own bottom must be. He examined himself in the mirror. The weals were still extremely painful, but that was tempered by the knowledge that he would bear these fantastic marks for many days.
They changed into pyjamas. They were unable to face the rest of the dorm yet. By missing supper - and thereby risking more punishment from a prefect - they could have a few quiet minutes to regain their composure and for the pain to begin to fade.
"How is it now?" Scully asked him.
"Still bloody sore," he replied. He lay on his bed, face down, his fingers down inside the back of his pyjama trousers, tracing the swollen lines of the weals across his bottom.
"I've never seen a swishing as bad as that," said Dorney. "Have you, Nigger?"
"No," said Poole. "I never thought he'd give more than six."
"Me neither," said Scully. "I'm glad I've never had it on my bare arse. Not from the old man at any rate. You should have seen the way the weal came up straight after each stroke, Davey. _f_u_c_k_ing amazing."
"I'd rather have seen it than felt it," Davey said, and they all laughed.
When the rest came up to bed they had to have a general display of the damage. The three who had been given six had classic five-barred-gate patterns - five parallel and nearly touching, the sixth across them diagonally - the pattern they were all so familiar with. But when Davey dropped his trousers and leaned over the end of his bed there was a chorus of whistles of appreciation. It was generally agreed that the old man was the most expert wielder of a cane there had ever been and when they heard that Davey had taken his swishing without blubbing, their admiration knew no bounds.
When the lights were put out at last, Davey lay in the darkness, still tracing the ropes of tender bruise. He could feel the scabs where the cane had broken the skin. He had heard of boys being made to bleed with a cane, and now it had happened to him. He wasn't sorry. It was as though he was a different boy now that he had suffered the same fate as all other boys. The pain had faded to an intense heat that wasn't unpleasant. And now there was nothing to be frightened of. Short of being given a full dozen with his pants down - or even worse, a dozen two days running as they had heard that a sixth former had been given last term - there was nothing worse that could be done to him. How could a prefect's slipper, or Patterson's cane be any worse than this?
Eventually he fell asleep, his conscience utterly clear. At the end of term when he took his report home, his father opened it and read with satisfaction and pride of how well his son was working at school. But then at the bottom, in the middle of the facts and figures, was the entry: 'Corporal punishment administered 5 times.'
"What is this, Mark?" he demanded.
"Just the whackings I've had, dad," said the boy.
"Didn't I tell you that if you got the cane at school I'd whack you myself?"
"Yes, dad," said Mark without flinching.
"Then you'd better fetch me the cane out of the bottom drawer of my bureau, hadn't you?"