Authors note
I, Oliver Pettigrew, commander of this tale, warn those of a nervous disposition to desist from reading this narrative now.
Behind the closed door of the study exceedingly nasty events were about to unfold. Wilkins, though puzzled and a little miffed at his extraordinary treatment, had, and indeed had no reason to have, no idea of the hell about to engulf him.
When Wilkins had audiences with the Headmaster he was greeted warmly and bidden to sit in a comfy armchair. There would be cordial chatter about this and that before discussion of Thistletop School organisational and disciplinary matters. Not so this time.
Dr de Ville looked grim. He seated himself but did not extend the courtesy to his visitor. There was a pregnant silence during which Wilkins, standing before Dr de Ville, felt increasingly uneasy. Wilkins' gaze turned to Dr de Ville's desk. It was clear of all clutter apart from a cane, which looked vaguely familiar, and a battered shoe box with its lid on.
Finally, Dr de Ville, his face filled with revulsion, said "I have all the facts. Lying will do you no good Wilkins. I want a full account of your behaviour."
Wilkins was, of course, genuinely puzzled and beginning to become scared. He didn't answer. He didn't know how to answer. He didn't understand the premise of the question.
"The systematic abuse of junior boys in this school that you have used your position of authority to cover?"
Wilkins' puzzlement and trepidation increased in equal measure. He still could not conceive an answer to a question so at variance with his experience and conduct.
Dr de Ville sighed, stood up and walked to his desk. He grasped the shoe box and removed its lid. "Apart from the testimony I have received and sight of injuries inflicted, here lies the physical evidence of your perversions."
Dr de Ville proceeded to remove the contents of the box one by one.
"Shoe blacking that you apply to boys private parts."
"A stick of shaving soap and the razor you use to humiliate boys by shaving the hair around their private parts."
Wilkins was stunned and totally unable to utter any words of denial.
"A strap that, I am given to understand, you use to beat boy's in their most intimate places."
"A rubber glove, I know its devilish purpose and have observed its effects."
Finally, Dr de Ville drew out a bundle of papers.
"Written confessions of offences against school rules that you use to blackmail boys to stay in your evil thrall."
Dr De Ville picked the cane up from his desk.
"The cane that you use, contrary to school regulations, to beat boys." This was Dr de Ville's weakest point. He knew full well about "unofficial" punishments being a part of school tradition. A cane or similar "unofficial" instrument would be found in every prefect's study. Yet in the present circumstances this seemed another piece of _d_a_m_n_ing evidence rather than the irrelevance it was; if the kitchen of a man suspected of knifing were searched it would contain knives, the number of knives would have no bearing on the likelihood of his guilt: the only item of forensic relevance would be a knife demonstrably connected with an attack.
The enormity of the trouble he was in began to dawn on Wilkins.
"But, Sir, I have not done those things." After a pause, he added "I have never seen that shoe box or its contents before now Sir."
Dr de Ville glared in a manner Wilkins had never yet witnessed. The youth visibly quavered.
"Then explain why it was found hidden at the back of the cupboard in your study!"
"It was not there" the boy said hesitantly. His hesitation arose from the sheer awfulness of this bizarre farce. Dr de Ville took the hesitation to signify guilt.
"Someone must have put it there" said Wilkins beginning to regain a little sense.
"Who?" demanded Dr de Ville. "Who would wish to maliciously implicate you in such as this?" He went on "How is it that I have consistent testimony from more than half a dozen boys, each interviewed alone? How is it that each of them exhibit marks of abuse on their bodies?"
Wilkins was stunned. So was Dr de Ville when he released the caste iron certainty of the evidence he had summarised.
He continued, "Are you asking me to believe in a monstrous conspiracy? Conspiracies just don't work, not for long. I certainly don't believe that schoolboys could sustain a conspiracy of that magnitude."
Wilkins' brain was rapidly exploring the conspiracy theory. No perpetrators came to mind. There were many boys he had needed to punish, officially or otherwise, but all cases had been fairly done; boys in such circumstance did not bear grudges, or if they did then not more than for an hour or two when the pain diminished and a sense of perspective returned. Smith and Dobson did not cross his mind at all; both admitted they were in the wrong and had gladly accepted Wilkins' offer of informal punishment.
As Wilkins had not responded to his last question Dr de Ville drew a line under evidential matters by saying:
"William of Occam held that when there is a multiplicity of explanations for something it is prudent to accept the simplest. In this case the simplest is obvious: you Wilkins did everything of which you have been accused."
At a solely intellectual level Wilkins accepted that logic. Yet he knew he was innocent. All he could do was to look Dr de Ville squarely in the face and say "I did not do that of which I am accused Sir."
That forlorn statement cut no ice with Dr de Ville.
"Wilkins you are a menace in this school and must be got rid of as soon as possible. I was minded to give you a severe birching before the entire school. However that luxury cannot be entertained. I want you out of here tomorrow. You shall have your birching tonight. Moreover, I shall write to Magdalene College and withdraw my character reference."
There was a long pause while very slowly the import of this last statement oozed through Wilkins', by now, befuddled thought processes.
Finally, Wilkins looked at Dr de Ville and said "I cannot accept punishment. I have done nothing wrong."
Dr de Ville took in that remark but chose not to respond immediately. He could see Wilkins betray his inner agitation, the self pity of the guilty about to be punished, through the manner in which he flexed his arms and legs, and the clenching and unclenching of his fists. He left Wilkins standing where he was and turned his attention to a document resting on the coffee table beside his chair. Five or so minutes later he turned his gaze back onto Wilkins and said, "You know the consequences of refusing?"
Wilkins, who had received time to reflect, stuttered "Y Y Yes Sir."
No boy had refused punishment, however severe or, rarely, however undeserved, during Dr de Ville's time as headmaster. There was one known case from before Dr de Ville's tenure and that had become stuff of legend still propagating within Thisteltop School.
"Do you refuse?"
"No sir. I must accept punishment but I AM innocent."
Normally Dr de Ville would not be able to perform an impromptu birching. Birches had to be freshly made for each miscreant. Fortunately, when a birch was being prepared, last term, for Hetherington the gardener had taken the opportunity to make several more to sell to other schools. He had two left over and offered to give them to Dr de Ville. The Headmaster had accepted them but insisted on paying the lowly paid gardener what he would have received from another institution. These spare birches were stored in traditional fashion: in a vat of brine. It has long been known that brine renders the birch branches and twigs more supple, damaging and painful. The spares were stored in the kitchen.
Dr de Ville recollected that Smith was waiting outside his study. He gave Smith two instructions. First, to seek out any master who was still on the premises and to request said master to attend Dr de Ville in his study; the Headmaster intended to delegate the birching as his shoulder had been particularly bad recently having been aggravated by a fall on slippery steps. Second, Smith was to go to the kitchens and return with a birch.
Smith was ecstatic. His plan, which had dangers, had worked.
He set about his tasks. No master was to be found. Smith even used the school's internal phone to call the lodge house where the deputy head and his family lived, but no answer: the family was at the repertory theatre in town watching a rather good, as it turned out, performance of "An inspector calls."
He quickly located the birches. He removed both from the vat and gave each a few exploratory swishes. He choose the meaner looking of the two.
Smith knocked on the Headmaster's study door and was commanded to enter. He observed Wilkins standing facing the opposite wall with his hands on his head; he was still fully clothed in his school uniform. Smith held the still dripping birch in his left hand. Dr de Ville told him to place it on the table in the punishment room.
The Headmaster was disappointed to hear of Smith's lack of success in rounding up a master but commended him on his effort. He didn't know what to do. On the one hand he felt incapable of administering a sound thrashing and, on the other, the matter could not be deferred; the evil youth must be sent packing on the morrow and he must not go unpunished. Then he remembered Smith's previous sterling efforts and said "Smith I want you to administer the thrashing. My shoulder is playing up. Anyway, there will some justice in that as you were one of Wilkins' victims.
Wilkins, with his back to the conversation, was still in a dazed state but managed to note that there was something incongruous about Smith being one of his alleged victims. However thoughts were percolating very slowly through his shocked mind at present and he did not draw any profound conclusions.
Dr de Ville said "I suppose we ought to get this done. Wilkins turn around, take off your clothes and place them on the chair by the door."
Shocked, Wilkins turned to face his headmaster. "But Sir, please Sir, please, .... please?"
Dr de Ville did not respond.
Wilkins realised there was to be no respite.
Slowly he turned toward the chair and started undressing at a rate paint drying might surpass. First his jacket. Then his tie. Next his shoes and socks. His trousers, his shirt, his vest. The he was standing before Dr de Ville and Smith clad only in his underpants.
A youth not yet more than seventeen years and four months, one of the younger in the upper sixth, of distinctly boyish looks and figure, was standing before his audience. Yet this youth, as already mentioned but now you can confirm it by seeing him in the flesh, was deceptively muscular; his arms and legs developed through swimming and running. As Smith knew to his cost Wilkins biceps and triceps, though not obviously protuberant, as in a body builder, were highly effective in delivering the slipper and cane. One of the reasons why Wilkins did not look impressively muscular was his lack of fat and also the fact that he had no apparent pectoral muscles, though they were there, and his belly did not have that striated look sought after by the body building fanatic yet it was completely flat and the muscle tone excellent. Wilkins visible body, apart from his head and under his arms seemed devoid of hair. Of course his arms and legs, and elsewhere, were covered in hairs but these were of fine texture, light colour and not readily apparent. His face was also hairless. Wilkins, like so many youths his age, feigned attention to shaving, going through the pointless, sometimes painful, ritual every day. The reality was that his upper lip, face and neck needed a light scrape over with a razor no more than once a month.
Smith's gaze passed slowly down Wilkins' body in an appraising way. Smith tended, aesthetically, to be more interested in boys of roughly his own age or below. Yet Wilkins' body interested him. After all, it was so smooth and sleek. It lacked the unattractive features of some older boys, such as obvious and widespread body hair, adult muscular patterns, etc. Wilkins was not much older than him, Smith thought. Smith suddenly realised that Wilkins had never figured in his dreams of domination and lust: not just because he was slightly older, and wrongly assumed to be unattractive, but also because he was a figure of authority and thus assumed to have adult attributes that would make him physically unappealing. Smith smiled inwardly and considered Wilkins in a new light.
His gaze continued down until it reached the waist band of Wilkins' underpants. The waist band was set well below the youth's navel. There was not the slightest hint of pubic hair trying to escape the confines of lower regions. That was good, Smith hated those wisps of hair that on, some, older boys encroached on the navel in a ragged line.
Looking further downwards it was obvious that Wilkins's underpants were filled with appendages extruded from the front of his body, yet this extrusion, hinted at by the bulge Smith was observing, was not vulgarly excessive.
From where the base of the underpants encircled Wilkins' lower thighs a pair of smooth well formed legs extended leading to feet of an exquisite fascination.
[Author's note: I find it difficult to understand what can be fascinating about feet, unless a toe is missing in which case it is a morbid fascination. However, Smith has insisted on this passage.]
In the second or so during which Smith's appraisal was taking place Dr de Ville also gazed at the youth before him. Through his mind went the simple question of how such a handsome (a veritable David) and healthy looking lad could be the receptacle of such evil. He fervently hoped that when the time came for marriage his daughters would consider more than physical appearance.
Wilkins' hand went to the waist band and stopped. He looked at Dr de Ville, his eyes pleading. There was no response.
Gradually Wilkins pulled his underpants down. He lent forward to ease them off his hips until they were able to fall to his ankles whereupon he stepped out of them. He straightened and his hands went atop his head.
The entirety of Smith's visual awareness was taken up by the space in the universe encompassed from three inches below Wilkins' navel to five inches down Wilkins' thighs. The pubic hair was light in colour and soft in appearance; something one would wish to run fingers through. Wilkins' penis was dangling like a pendulous pale finely shaped sausage, neither chipolata nor banger, it moved slightly as Wilkins drew each breathe. A blue vein, that curled at its end, passed down the dorsal surface of the organ. The foreskin was intact and encircled an orifice that could not be seen from Smith's angle of vision.
Wilkins' legs were slightly apart. On either side of the flaccid penis, up to half way along its length, could be seen the two well filled sacks of Wilkins' scrotum, the sack on Wilkins' right side dangling a bit further down.
Wilkins was aware of Smith's gaze and at some deep, but not immediately conscious, level apprehended its meaning. His face reddened further from that which had occurred when he had begun divesting himself of his underpants. The erythema spread into his neck and down the upper part of his hairless chest.
Dr de Ville addressed Wilkins saying "Go into the punishment room and stand before the punishment horse."
Wilkins, now in an utterly numb state, turned to his left and approached the door to the punishment room. He opened the door, switched on the light and proceeded to stand facing the horse. His hands, apart from the temporary use of one to manipulate the door handle and switch, remained on his head.
While this evolution was being accomplished Smith had a vision of a fulsome rear that rippled as its two principal muscles, the gluteus maximus and gluteus minimus, propelled the rest of the multi-cellular organism called "Wilkins" toward the horse. Wilkins' rear was unusually handsome. Though muscular, it was not one of those minimal, low slung, structures so often seen in athletic young men. It was wide, ample, rounded and soft in appearance, though there was barely an ounce of fat on it.
Dr de Ville said "Smith, please get Wilkins strapped on the horse."
Smith willingly, delightedly, enthusiastically went to comply. Yet his face retained an expression of determination to do an unpleasant duty.
Smith stood behind Wilkins and quietly said "Be a good chap and bend over so that I can check the adjustment of the horse." Smith knew full well that the horizontal platform was too low. He wanted to put Wilkins through the added humiliation and delay of at least a couple of attempts to get the settings right.
Wilkins gingerly stepped forward so that his genitals were encompassed by the curved recess in the platform and then bent fully forward grasping the front supports of the horse.
Smith ran the palms of both hands firmly over Wilkins' stretched buttocks as if testing whether the muscular resilience was correct. He bade Wilkins stand again, adjusted the table and repeated the previous procedure. As Dr de Ville seemed in no hurry he repeated this, to Wilkins' increasing consternation, twice more. Then, he started applying the straps very firmly indeed. Wilkins complained that the straps were uncomfortably tight but Smith ignored these entreaties. Wilkins was being placed into a tighter position than any trussed chicken. Smith had started with the hand straps as these immediately rendered Wilkins effectively immobile, then he did the leg straps and finally the chest strap. It was while he was doing the final strap that he heard the internal phone ring in Dr de Ville' study.
To be continued (if you have the stomach for it).