Like all kids I used to get into trouble from time to time and I usually paid for it with a sore arse. But the worst spanking I ever got was when I was fifteen. It was the end of the summer term at school, I was in the fifth form and we were supposed to have our last gym lesson of the year. Our gym master, Mr Thomas, was a tough, stocky man in his early fifties and most of us were too scared of him to disobey him. But, as I say, it was the last gym period of the year and a dozen or so of us decided we were old enough to stay away. Looking back I can't imagine how we thought we'd get away with it. We just stayed in the form room, messing about, playing cards, making quite a lot of noise. Half an hour passed and we were enjoying ourselves, congratulating ourselves on putting one over on old Thomas - and then the door opened and he walked in. Total silence fell.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked - quietly but with a tone of menace in his voice.
Someone stammered, "Sir, it was the last gym class and we thought - "
"Well, you thought wrong. If you don't want to do gym during school, you can do it after school. Four o'clock in the gym, all of you. Four o'clock SHARP." And he turned around and went out.
After that we were pretty subdued. It was Friday, we were all looking forward to the weekend, and now we were in detention. Worse, I had promised to dig the garden for my father when I got home. Now I'd get home late and I'd be for it a second time. Not only that, I had a feeling I wouldn't feel much like digging the garden after Mr Thomas's detention. Somehow I didn't think he'd stop at putting us through some light exercises.
The rest of the day dragged. Finally the four o'clock bell went and most of our friends went off to enjoy the rest of the summer afternoon. We grabbed our PT gear and raced down to the gym. Arriving late would have made matters worse. Mr Thomas was waiting for us. He didn't need to tell us to get changed. Also he didn't tolerate any talking in the changing rooms. We got undressed and put on our PT gear, such as it was - all that we were ever allowed to wear for PT was short blue gym shorts and plimsolls. At least it wasn't cold: it was summer and the gym had that warm and sweaty odour of school gymnasiums everywhere.
Mr Thomas didn't waste time; he soon had us doing push-ups, sit-ups, squat thrusts, shuttle sprints and all the rest of it. Then finally the moment I had dreaded arrived - he told Mike and me to fetch a low vaulting horse and put in the centre of the gym. While we were doing this he went into the store room at the back and came back with a long, heavy strap. My heart was already pounding from the punishing exercises we had done, but now it felt as if it was going to burst. My throat went dry, my stomach turned over. For one horrible moment I thought I was going to piss in my shorts.
He lined us up, with Mike at the front and me just behind him, and told Mike to bend over the horse, legs apart, hands grasping the holds on the far side. I watched in terrified fascination. The lad's tight blue shorts were so thin, he might as well have been naked. The shorts had ridden right up and the lower parts of his buttocks were bare in any case. Little streams of sweat ran down his back and thighs. I could see his legs trembling in fear.
Mr Thomas took up his stance, ran the strap through his hands, then raised it and brought it down on Mike's arse. There was a tremendous crack, and then Mike let out a yell of pain. Mr Thomas gave him a contemptuous look, then turned to us and said, "You thought you were all so grown up, didn't you?" We knew better than to say anything. Suddenly he brought the strap again, viciously, on Mike's unprotected thighs and the poor kid let out another scream. "We'll see how grown up you are when it comes to taking the strap." And he lashed Mike again across the centre of his buttocks; this time there was a kind of muffled gasp. "As long as you're at this school, you are subject to school discipline." The fourth stroke seemed even louder, and Mike yelled again. "You may be in the fifth form, but you will still respect authority." He raised the belt and brought it down again; Mike didn't so much yell as sob. "And you will get the strap when you deserve it." For the sixth time the strap came down with a tremendous whack and Mike's whole body convulsed. Mr Thomas's thin mouth curved into a slight smile. "You will each get six strokes of the strap" - Mike's body relaxed a little - "over your shorts and six strokes on the bare buttocks."
There was a stunned silence. Outside I could just hear occasional shouts as my friends enjoyed the summer afternoon. In the gym, Mike's breathing was loud and tormented; then, as he slowly began to take in what Mr Thomas had said, he started unmistakably to cry. Mr Thomas's smile became a little broader. "You thought you were a man, didn't you, Evans?" He bent over and pulled down Mike's shorts, which were now soaked in sweat. "You're a disobedient boy who needs disciplining. Lift your feet." He tugged the shorts right off and threw them aside.
I was in a kind of trance. I gazed as if hypnotised at the red weals across Mike's arse and upper legs. Mr Thomas had finished his lecture and the smile - such as it was - disappeared. With a look of grim determination, he raised the strap and began to beat Mike's bare buttocks. Six tremendous strokes fell, each one followed by a pitiful gasp. When it was all over, Mike was crying his eyes out.
"All right," Mr Thomas said, as Mike's sobs echoed round the gym, "stand up, put your hands on your head, and turn around."
Very slowly, Mike managed to get up. He raised his arms, clasped his hands behind his head, and turned around. Naked, his face reddened and contorted in agony, sobbing helplessly, his humiliation was complete. Mr Thomas gestured towards the wall. "Stand over there with you back to the wall bars, and keep still. And for God's sake, boy, try to stop crying." Then he turned to me. "Bryson. Over the horse."
I jerked out of my reverie. All my sympathy for poor Mike evaporated as I realised that the same thing was about to happen to me. I felt everyone looking at me, my face began to burn with embarrassment, I was going to be whipped, stripped naked, degraded ....
"Bryson! Jump to it! NOW!"
Slowly I walked to the vaulting horse, bent over it and got my hands into the holes on the far side. I gripped them as hard as I could. All I could think of was my unprotected arse stuck up in the air. There was nothing I could do. This was crazy, I was a man not a boy, how could this be happening?
Suddenly I heard the whistle of the strap coming down, the crack as it struck me, and then pain exploded within me. I had promised myself I would not yell, my teeth were clenched so hard I thought they would break, but still I yelped like a whipped dog. I had been beaten before but never like this. My arse was on fire, the thin shorts gave me no protection but I was aware of the damp seam rubbing into the cleft between my buttocks.
Just as I was coming to my senses again, the second stroke fell. I tasted bile in my mouth. Through the noise and the pain I kept thinking, I must not throw up, I must not piss in my shorts. After the sixth stroke I felt Mr Thomas's hands pulling at my sweat-drenched shorts; I cried out as the thin cotton pulled away from the weals on my flesh. I could hardly lift my feet off the floor to step out of them, my legs were cramped and shaking. Then it began again, the strap biting into my bare skin, waves of agony coursing through my body and searing, stinging pain in my arse between the strokes.
When he finally finished I could hardly stand up, every muscle in my body was tensed and aching. Somehow I got my hands on my head and limped over to stand by Mike at the wall bars. Tears were running down my face and my throat was raw from yelling. As if through a mist I saw the others take their dozen each; but the noise of the strap hitting their shorts and then their naked flesh, and their screams of pain, will stay with me as long as I live.
I don't know how long it went on. Eventually we were all lined up along the wall bars, all twelve of us naked and crying, with our backsides on fire. All we wanted was to rub the pain away, but we had to keep our hands on our heads. Mr Thomas made us turn around to face the bars, and there we had to stay, stock-still. He walked slowly up and down behind us, slowly tapping an old gym-shoe against the palm of his hand. The cramp in my muscles was becoming unbearable, and I shuffled my feet slightly to try to ease the pain. Suddenly I heard his footsteps behind me, a whistling through the air, and WHOP! the gym-shoe landed squarely on my burning right buttock, then WHOP! on the left. I couldn't help it, I cried out, "No Sir, please Sir! I can't take any more!"
"Then keep still!" he snapped.
Time wore on. Now and again there was the sudden whack of the plimsoll as someone fidgeted. At one point Mr Thomas whacked poor Mike so hard that he lost his balance and fell forward, grabbing at the wall bars. Mr Thomas pulled him away, tucked Mike's head under his shoulder, and gave him six real stingers. After that Mike kept still.
At last we heard him walk back into the changing room, but we still didn't dare move; we knew he would look over his shoulder. We heard the noise of the showers being turned on and knew there was another part of the punishment still to come: as it was summer, he would let the water run a long time until it was really cold. After a few minutes we suddenly heard his voice again: "All right. Hands down and turn around. Pick up your shorts and get into the showers, at the double."
Our gym shorts lay in an untidy pile on the floor where he had tossed them; we had to look at the name tags to find the right pair. As I rummaged in the pile, I suddenly smelt the acid odour of stale urine mixed in with the smell of adolescent sweat and I knew that someone had not been able to avoid pissing themselves during the strapping. I hesitated slightly with the piss-soaked shorts in my hands and got another stinging blow from the plimsoll across my backside.
Then we half jogged, half limped into the showers, which were stingingly cold; my aching muscles tensed up even more, although the icy water did relieve the burning in my arse a bit. We couldn't help trying to compare our wounds, but Mr Thomas stayed at the entrance to the communal shower, his cold eyes regarding us impassively, so that we only dared take quick glances at each other's welts. Finally he reached out and turned off the tap. We stood huddled together, shivering, totally ashamed.
"I hope you have all learned your lesson. If there is a gym period on your timetable, you will report to the gym. You will respect school discipline and you will obey the school staff. If there is ever any repetition of this disgraceful behaviour, I shall send the boys concerned to the headmaster for the cane. Now get dressed and go home. And make sure you dry yourselves properly."
We knew what the last sentence meant. Leaving wet footprints on the changing room floor incurred a punishment of ten lines per toe, or fifty lines per foot. But poor Mike was in such pain and so desperate to escape from the gym that he gave his feet only a cursory wipe with the towel. Mr Thomas found him standing at the end of a trail of six wet footprints and ordered him to return the next day for Saturday morning detention, where he would write out "I must dry my feet properly before leaving the shower area" three hundred times. Mike was so totally demoralised that he made no sign of reacting at all.
Not a word was spoken as we finally left school, getting disparaging glances from the cleaning ladies. We were all wondering what was in store for us when we got home. I waited at the bus stop with my hands pressed tightly to the seat of my trousers, trying without much success to reduce the fiery stinging. Despite the icy cold shower, I had started sweating again, and my underpants were sticking painfully to my backside. When the bus eventually arrived, although there were a few seats still unoccupied, I decided it was better to stand.
It was well after six o'clock when I got home. As soon as I walked through the front door I knew that I could not hope to conceal what had happened. The door of my father's study was open and, as I entered the house, he looked up from his desk. "Come in here," he said. He had taken off his jacket, but still looked immaculate in his starched white shirt, regimental tie and dark trousers. I felt very scruffy and I knew my eyes were still red and swollen from crying. Somehow it was as if he'd read my mind. "What do you look like?" he said. "Do up your shirt collar and knot your tie properly." I obeyed.
"Now," he said, "didn't you promise to come straight home from school and dig the garden for me?"
There was no point trying to deceive him; for all I knew, Mr Thomas might have already phoned him and told him what had happened. So I explained how I and my friends had cut gym and been made to stay behind after school. I said that we had all got the strap from Mr Thomas. I couldn't bring myself to describe how we had been forced to stand naked afterwards and then to take a cold shower.
"I see," said my father. He gave me a tight smile, which looked uncomfortably like Mr Thomas's. "Well, it's a bit late to start digging the garden now. Don't worry, you can do it tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? But Dad, I'm going to the football match tomorrow with Mike and the gang."
"'Mike and the gang?' Well, Mike won't be going. I believe he has lines to write for Mr Thomas." So that was it. He knew everything that had happened. My face began to turn red again as I realised that my Dad knew everything about the humiliation I had gone through that afternoon. "In fact, I doubt if any of 'the gang' will be going. While you were on your way home, Mr Thomas phoned me to say how disappointed he was that a group of fifth formers had seen fit to behave in such a childish and impertinent matter. He even implied that lax parental discipline might be to blame." I didn't like the way this was going. "He said that the lesson he had given you might need - um - reinforcing. I'm inclined to agree with him. You know, Peter, I thought that now you were in the fifth form I could give you a little more freedom and trust you to use it responsibly. But it seems you still need to be disciplined like a small boy. You'd better go and kneel in the corner."
I stared at him, then looked over to the corner, then found myself looking at the knees of my trousers, which, I suddenly saw, were dirty. When I was a small boy in short trousers, my father would sometimes punish me by forcing me to kneel in the corner of his study; the rug didn't reach that far and the floor was hard, cold stone. I remembered the aching in my bare knees after an hour or two in that dark, gloomy corner. But in long trousers ....?
"The knees of your trousers are a disgrace anyway, in fact your entire appearance is a disgrace. Get undressed."
I had thought that my humiliation was complete, but it was not yet so. Under my father's cold eye, I took off my school blazer and tried to hang it neatly on the chair back. Then I loosened the tie which I had just tied correctly, and removed it and my shirt. Sick with frustration and feeling utterly foolish, I bent down to untie my shoes and realised that they were dirty and scuffed. As I took off my shoes and socks, an unpleasant smell of sweaty feet rose to meet me and I blushed even more. Finally I took off my trousers, folded them carefully and laid them on top of my blazer. I could hardly bear to meet my father's eyes. I guessed what he was going to say. "Your underpants too." Yet again my eyes filled with tears, this was my father, I loved him, he loved me, yet he was treating me like a small child, I would have to kneel in the corner, go to bed without supper, perhaps even - the thought filled me with despair - write out lines for him. As I pulled down my Y-fronts, they stuck to the weals on my backside. Tears were running down my face. "Dad," I said, "Dad, please - "
He stood up and walked around to my side of the desk, then picked up my shoes and looked at them critically. "When did you last polish these?" he asked.
"I don't know, Monday, Tuesday ...." I looked down at the floor, exhausted.
He put the shoes down, shaking his head, then put a finger under my chin and tilted my head up until he was looking directly into my eyes. Then suddenly he slapped me hard across the face, left, right. I saw stars and cried out. "I'm very disappointed in you," he said. "Go and kneel in the corner with your hands on your head and don't move until I give you permission."
And so I went over to the corner and knelt on the rough stone just as if I were a naughty little boy. Memories of all kinds of childish punishments came back to me. I remembered the ruler across my palms and my knuckles, being forced to copy out pages from the prayer book or the dictionary, being forced to learn long passages from the Bible by heart. My face burned, my arse burned, I imagined his eyes surveying the welts on my buttocks.
This was turning into the longest day of my life. I knelt there facing the wall, helpless, with no idea of what was in store for me. From time to time I heard him shuffling papers on his desk and again I could hear the voices of children and teenagers outside in the street, having a good time, while I was forced to kneel naked on cold stone staring at a blank wall.
Finally, after a particularly prolonged rustling of papers, my father said, "All right, stand up, put your hands down and come over here."
I got stiffly to my feet and turned around and as I did so, for the tenth or fifteenth time that day, my stomach turned over. My father had cleared all the papers and books off his desk. On it lay a cane - a long, thick cane. I could only stare at it, my jaw hanging open.
"I said, come over here." I found myself standing in front of the desk, my father sitting on the other side, looking at me coldly. There was no smile now. "There are some things you have to understand, Peter. You and your friends think you are grown up, but you are not grown up at all. Mr Thomas tells me that he had twelve little crybabies in the gym this afternoon." I could not stop myself, I began to cry again, I felt so ashamed and belittled. "Twelve lads who got what they deserved, a good leathering on their bare backsides. You let yourself down, Peter, but you let me down too. Mr Thomas thinks you come from a family where the father is frightened to discipline his son. I intend to prove otherwise." He stood up, picked up the cane and, walking round to my side of the desk, cut a few practice strokes in the air. The whistling sound was terrifying. "You need to learn that you're still subject to the discipline of your parents and your schoolmasters. I am going to remind you of that, and you will remember it every time you sit down for the next few days. Since you think you're a big lad now, we'll see how you take the senior cane."
"No, Dad!" I blurted out. "Please, no! Thomas already - "
"MISTER Thomas to you!"
"Sorry Dad, yes, Mister Thomas," I was gabbling, I didn't know what I was saying, "you don't know how he laid into us, you can see what he's done to me, I can't take the cane, please Dad, no, not that - "
"Stop snivelling," my father said contemptuously. Then he seemed to reflect for a second or two. "Very well then," he continued, "I'll give you a choice of punishment."
Thank God, I prayed silently. He's going to give me extra chores or something.
"Twelve strokes of the cane. But you can choose, either twelve on the bare backside or six on each hand."
My hopes were dashed. I'd had a couple of cuts on the hand with a light cane at school - several times. But six on each hand from a cane like my father's was too horrible to contemplate; afterwards I wouldn't be able to hold a knife and fork, let alone a garden fork, and I still had to dig the garden the next day. "All right, Dad, I'll take them on the backside."
He just nodded. "Bend over the desk and grab the far edge with your hands."
I tried to prepare myself mentally but it was no good. My father and Mr Thomas between them had completely broken me. In my own mind I was just a worthless small boy with a sore bottom and a runny nose. There was nothing I could do. Their power over me was total.
In fact I was almost calm when the first stroke fell. There was a penetrating whistle, far louder than the noise made by the strap, and then a crack like a pistol shot. A line of white heat ran across my buttocks, followed after a spilt second by an explosion of pain in my stomach and legs. A scream tore my throat. There was an agonisingly long wait during which my father made a few more practice strokes, each of which turned my guts to water. Then WHAP! the second stroke landed just below the first. I cried, I sobbed, I gripped the desk till my knuckles cracked. WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! I was gasping and crying, trying not to move, wishing it would end. I had lost count but I knew I hadn't had twelve. Was he taking pity on me?
No. He changed his position slightly and delivered the remaining six in a criss-cross pattern. For the second time that afternoon my whole body was racked with pain and I heard my own voice screaming as if from afar. I was too dazed to realise when it was finally all over.
Except that only the beating was over, not the humiliation. My father told me to stand up, then said, "Go to the bathroom and clean yourself up." Involuntarily my hands moved to my buttocks and I felt something wet. I pulled them away. They were streaked with blood. "You will then go straight to bed without supper. Tomorrow you will dig the garden. You will be sent to bed at 6 pm. You will spend Sunday writing out five hundred times, 'I must respect the authority of my parents and my schoolteachers at all times and without question'. After writing the lines you will write a letter of apology to Mr Thomas, which you will bring to me here on Sunday evening. If the letter is satisfactory, I shall regard the matter as closed; if not, I shall cane you again. Off you go."
I spent the night crying and lying on my stomach; I didn't get much sleep. The next day I spent digging the garden. My father forced me to wear rough denim shorts, which rubbed against the cane and strap welts with every movement I made. On Sunday I wrote my lines and my letter to Mr Thomas. Fortunately the letter was satisfactory. But it wasn't the last time I felt my father's cane.