by Stanlegh Meresith
Thrust up high and helpless, Annabel's bare bottom writhes beneath the Headmistress' cane as a fifth stripe sears her soft, yielding flesh. Her knuckles blanch on the hoops of the punishment dais. The burning pain is unbearable.
Only half way? I'll DIE!
But this isn't the first time she's feared annihilation at the hands of Miss Hurst, driven by pain to an imagined grave. "Death by sliced bum," the coroner will declare to her bewildered parents, "as a result of persistent recalcitrance." These desperate moments are a deja vu, because here she is again, very much alive, wishing she were dead.
She feels the imminence of the next stroke. She's developed a sense for it after so many canings - a slight disturbance in the air, a faint flap of gown as the Head's arm winds up to unleash another swish of her lean, yellow stick. She tries to brace herself, but her bottom is beyond her command. Where once it clenched on demand, now it just twitches with trauma, its muscles' obedience lost in the throbbing fire.
She groans, then wails as the cane flashes in to find the fleshiest, most sensitive part of her bottom, which flattens and wobbles before a livid red stripe gushes forth to bear witness to the punishing lash.
Never, she thinks. Never again!
But she knows that she will. It's her nature. Like a fecund mother broody for more, she'll forget last time's pain and surrender to whatever insurgent impulse brings her back soonest to this study, this dais, this altar to her punished self...
The 3.30 Sunday service from London Victoria crept up to the buffers at Brighton station and jolted to a stop. Doors flew open and dozens of uniformed girls spilled onto the platform, their excited chatter rising to the vaulted glass ceiling where it set the pigeons aflutter. In the distinctive blue blazers of Greystones Boarding School, their six-weekly migrations were a familiar sight to the station employees. This warm June afternoon marked the return from the half-term break.
"Here comes the gaggle," sighed Bert, standing ready at the gate to the concourse. His youthful companion - with an oversized British Rail cap perching comically on his protuberant ears - grunted, licking his lips.
"Control yourself, lad," growled Bert.
Among the girls gathered in the noisy crowd shuffling forward to have their tickets collected were seventeen-year-old Annabel Bennett and her friend Danielle Appleton, members of the lower-sixth at the prestigious school.
"You sure you won't come?" asked Annabel.
Danielle chuckled ruefully. "No thanks, Annie. You know..."
Annabel sighed. "Yeah, I know."
Danielle was no coward, but the excursion Annabel had planned was extremely risky. It would lead to almost certain discovery, and thence to punishment, which at Greystones meant an extremely sore bottom - in this case, most likely, via a very brisk caning - an experience Danielle had no wish to repeat. The fact that Annabel herself was willing to risk it was due to an unusual aspect of her physiology that had puzzled her for years.
The youngest of five, with four older brothers, she discovered early in life that she quite liked having her bottom smacked. Still a tomboy at twelve, she reduced her parents to frazzled bewilderment with her daring defiance, outdoing even the naughtiest of her brothers in the frequency of spankings received. An oft-repeated Bennett family anecdote told of the occasion when Annabel, aged six, had burst into tears after a dose of her father's slipper, claiming he didn't love her as much as the brother who'd just suffered the same fate.
"What on earth makes you think that?" her father had asked in dismay.
"You spanked him harder!" she'd exclaimed.
Having taken pride in the story as a child, she found it embarrassing when she discovered, at thirteen, that there was something deeper to her enjoyment of a smacked bottom than she'd realised, something that stirred her in places then budding with hints of exciting promise - at which point, fearful of her secret's exposure, she curbed her misbehaviour.
Despatched to Greystones a year later, however, she found herself in an environment heaven-sent for someone of her unusual nature, for discipline at the school was rigorous and its application to one's bottom invariably painful. Though careful to conceal her predilection for the punishments that terrified most girls, she'd sought them out eagerly whenever the opportunity arose. Only the biting sting of the cane did she find too bracing for her liking, though she prized its after-effects above all other of the implements in use at the school.
Having acquired quite a reputation over her eight terms at Greystones - among teachers as a wayward nuisance, among her peers as a tough-skinned daredevil - she was grateful for prudish English reticence, for even her closest friends were loath to say out loud what most of them surely suspected: that she was weird. Encountering the word masochist in a dusty volume in her uncle's library the previous summer, she'd been relieved to discover that she wasn't unique. In fact, it had been liberating, as the punishment log for 1968-69 bore witness - the name Bennett appeared no fewer than fourteen times, with four entries already for the summer term.
Handing in their tickets, and sniffing at the leer on the face of the big-eared young guard, the two girls slipped away from the herd heading for the coach to school and hid behind a newspaper stall. Annabel removed her blazer and tie and stuffed them in her bag with her boater. "Here," she said, handing it to Danielle. "If anyone asks, I missed the train, okay?"
Danielle grunted. "Good luck with that one. Armfield saw you, and Williams."
They both knew the prefects would be consulted when Annabel's absence was discovered.
"Yeah, I know, but still..."
Danielle peeked round the corner of the stall. "I'd better run. Have a good time."
Annabel grinned. "I will. I just hope I can get his autograph before the gig."
"Yeah, good luck."
Rob Hooper, Annabel's favourite singer-songwriter was playing that night at Kemptown Folk Club. A keen singer herself, and in the choir at school, she'd worked out the chords to many of his songs on the piano, and she knew his rebel lyrics by heart. She'd have to leave early to get the last bus to Burston (the nearest village to the school) but the chance to see her hero was too exciting to pass up.
Waiting till the coach pulled away, she emerged from her hiding-place and set off for the beach. She'd hang out there till it was time for the gig. She might even meet some freaks and get stoned - who knew? Anything could happen for a girl with an open mind.
Passing a gentleman's outfitters, she saw a sign in the window: Selection of hats and canes. She shuddered, wondering how many she'd get this time.
"Hello?... Mrs Bennett?... It's Gladys Charwell... yes, quite well, thank you, and you?... good... yes, gorgeous weather... quite so... er, yes... well, I don't wish to alarm you, but I'm afraid Annabel hasn't arrived back at..."
The Housemistress of Mary's held the receiver away from her ear.
"Yes, Mr Bennett, I know. We feel the same way... no, she was definitely on the train... yes, the 3.30. She was seen by the Head Girl... well, Brighton's a terminus, so she can't have missed the... yes, that's right... we think she must've slipped away and gone into the town..." She looked at her watch. "We're hoping she'll be on a bus to Burston. The next one arrives at eight. One of my colleagues is on her way there now... Er, no, Mr Bennett. We'd prefer not to involve them at this stage, but of course we'll call them immediately if Annabel's not on the last bus at nine... yes... yes, I know - it's extremely irresponsible of her..." She laughed bitterly. "Oh, don't worry about that, we certainly will... thank you, Mr Bennett... yes, I'll call again as soon as we have news... goodbye."
Nicknamed 'Frankie' (short for Frankenstein) by the girls, Miss Charwell's expression as she put the phone down was as grim as the monster created by her namesake. If not quite the bane of her life, the Bennett girl was certainly one of the most recalcitrant she'd ever had the misfortune to act in loco parentis for. Why some of her colleagues thought the girl charming, she had no idea. Admittedly, she did have a ready smile, and accepted her punishments with uncommon readiness (and noise), but Gladys had never believed those vows of remorse and repentance that seemed to cajole her colleagues into repeated forgiveness. Even the Headmistress was under the girl's spell - so much so that Gladys had given up trying to suggest expulsion.
"Oh come now," Dorothy Hurst had exclaimed the last time Gladys had tried. "She isn't that bad - just very high-spirited."
It was true that Bennett had yet to do anything appalling enough to warrant the ultimate sanction, but Gladys waited with grim optimism for the day that she did.
Emily Stokes, English teacher and form tutor to the most recalcitrant girl in Mary's (if not the whole school), sat in the passenger seat of her partner's Mini and gazed at the passing fields. She loved these late June evenings when the shadows of the wooded downs stretched languorously across the fields.
"Penny for your thoughts," said Prudence, hands fixed competently at ten and two on the steering-wheel.
Emily sighed. "Oh, you know..."
Prudence chuckled. "You're thinking about the almighty caning she's going to get, aren't you?" She, too, taught Bennett; in her case, Geography.
"What? No, of course I'm not!"
Prudence arched an eyebrow and grunted.
"Alright, yes," said Emily, smiling despite her annoyance at how easily Prudence read her mind. "Yes, I was, sort of."
"Well, don't worry, young lady. Your turn will come soon enough."
It was true about her 'turn' coming, if not about the 'young'. In their late thirties, and colleagues for fifteen years, Prudence Waring and Emily Stokes enjoyed a relationship made especially passionate by the former's delight in satisfying the latter's need for regular attention to her backside. Friday evening was the time they set aside for Emily's 'punishment', and her stripes were still pleasantly sore from their latest bout as they approached Burston just before eight o'clock that Sunday evening.
Emily hummed appreciatively. "I know, darling. It's just that..." She sighed.
"What?"
"Well... I miss the thrill of it. The danger, I mean. I wasn't thinking of Bennett's caning exactly, more how she must be feeling, coming back on that bus, knowing what's in store."
Prudence slowed and came to a halt outside the Burston Arms, opposite the bus stop. "You're assuming she'll be on it. For all we know, the little minx could be lying dead in some seedy back street."
Emily shook her head. "No, Prudence. She'll be fine, trust me."
She envied Bennett, whom she'd taught since the fourth form - envied not just the bloom of the girl's youth as the memory of her own faded, but the fearlessness with which she got what she wanted. For Emily, too, had been aware of her masochism from an early age, and had attended a school as unremittingly strict as Greystones. But where she'd lived in shame of her peculiarity (until Prudence had entered her life), Bennett seemed quite content, as far as she understood it. Mind you, attitudes had changed beyond all recognition since her girlhood in the fifties. One's sexuality now was a thing to explore, not hide or deny.
"Here it comes," said Prudence. They got out and stood by the car, watching the bus pull up. It was almost empty. Two lads climbed down and crossed the road to the pub as the bus pulled away.
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