by Michael Sharpe
Gordon Childers cut a lonely and forlorn figure sitting alone on the long wooden bench stretching along one wall of the school office. Feeling sorry for the worried young lad, Mrs Caldicott, the Head's secretary, gave him a warm, encouraging smile. Newly married, she didn't have children of her own but if in the future she did, she wouldn't mind at all if one of them turned out like Gordon. He was a beautiful, angelic-looking young teen with a fresh, innocent face and thick wavy golden hair. True, he showed signs of that plumpness which boys sometimes accumulate as they enter their early teens but he would soon work that off and mature into a fine strapping youth. And he was ever so well mannered, too. He certainly wasn't the type of boy to find himself seated on that bench, and yet here he was for the third time in the two weeks that he had been at the school.
Gordon couldn't quite understand how he had got himself into this position. At his previous school and his junior school before that, he had been an exemplary pupil and if there was anything he regretted about his behaviour, it was that he was a little too good and had built himself a reputation as a bit of a teacher's pet: but not at Edendale Middle School and certainly not with Miss Thomas. He didn't blame Miss Thomas and he certainly didn't think that she was picking on him, but it seemed that whatever he did or said just seemed to turn out wrong.
The intercom on Mrs Caldicott's desk buzzed and she leaned over to answer it. A disembodied, fuzzy and indistinct voice spoke, asking if she could spare a moment.
"Certainly, Head," she responded. "I'll be with you in a tick."
Mrs Caldicott rose and walked over to the Head's door, passing Gordon on the way. She gave him another comforting smile and ruffled his hair affectionately.
"Don't worry, Gordon. It'll be all over in a flash and you'll wonder what all the nerves were about."
Then she disappeared into the Head's study leaving Gordon alone with his thoughts. Gordon had started at Edendale just after Christmas. His father had remarried, providing Gordon with a step-mother and two new sisters. As Jennifer had the larger house it made sense for the two males to move in with the girls even though this entailed Gordon changing schools. Edendale was one of the new, experimental Middle Schools, taking in students aged between nine and fourteen. At the age of thirteen, Gordon entered the second highest year. He had been attending a conventional Grammar School so the difference in the pupils' age band was something new to him. It also made a change for him to attend a school with girls in it.
After five or so minutes, which seemed like an hour to Gordon, Mrs Caldicott emerged with a young lady in tow. Gordon recognised the girl as Alison Toft, a friend of his elder step-sister, Sarah, who was in the year above him. She was a little breathless and her face was flushed but she seemed in good humour and chatted merrily with the older woman. She caught sight of Gordon, smiled and then pulled a comical face.
"You, too?" she said, and added, "Good luck," before giving her bottom a rub and leaving the office.
It was Gordon's turn to blush and he thought it cruel of Alison to make the rubbing gesture. He had heard from one or two of the other boys that the Head had a selection of canes and was prepared to use them. Alison was clearly suggesting that he was going to be caned and on his bottom, too. The idea that a girl, and a very pretty one at that, was aware of his possible fate was just too embarrassing.
Mrs Caldicott gestured that it was Gordon's turn to face the Head, and held the door open for him to go through. Gordon stepped inside the office and sheepishly looked across at the woman seated at the long desk facing him. Like the rest of her study, the light oak and steel desk was an example of modernist elegance. The woman gave a long frustrated sigh and signalled to the upright chair in front of her desk.
"Make yourself comfortable, Gordon, and tell me all about it," she said with a weary resignation, shaking her head.
Miss Amy Chadwick's manner, Gordon reflected, wasn't that of an irate headmistress facing a recalcitrant pupil for the third time in two weeks. She was more like a good natured family doctor sad to see that a young patient's cough had not cleared up and that this latest consultation must result in stronger medicine being prescribed. Even so, he was still very nervous. He took his seat opposite Miss Chadwick and, in that hasty way that over-excited boys often have, gushed out his sorry tale of how he hadn't really been trying to correct Miss Thomas, but she'd made a mistake because she had split an infinitive - and he'd been taught at his other school that you never did that. Ever! And besides, he didn't mean to swear at her at all. It just sort of slipped out. And he didn't know that it was a swear word, anyway... well, not a bad one.
Miss Chadwick listened to the boy carefully and shook or nodded her head in the appropriate places. When he had finished his apologia cum confession she looked at him gravely and began to speak in her soft measured tones.
"I have spoken with your other teachers, Gordon, and they tell me that you are a courteous, well-behaved, intelligent young man who makes valuable contributions to the class. Is that the case?"
The boy blushed at the flattering description of himself and conceded that he did try his best in the other classes. "And I try to in Miss Thomas's class, too!" he added.
"Yet Miss Thomas has sent you to see me three times already and we've not yet completed three weeks of the term. It seems that you only act like a naughty boy in front of Miss Thomas. Why is that, do you think, Gordon?"
Gordon couldn't think of an answer and chewed his lip.
"Is it because she is a new teacher, and you think that you can get away with taking advantage of her?"
"NO, Miss Chadwick," Gordon said vehemently.
"Perhaps you just don't like her, although why that should be, I really don't know. She seems to me to be a pretty young lady who would appeal to a young man like yourself."
Gordon's face lit up and he said dreamily, "But I do like her, Miss Chadwick. I think she's lovely!"
Amy Chadwick smiled to herself. She knew one thing that could make a young boy's desire for attention slip into rowdyism, friendliness into insolent familiarity, and initiative turn into disobedience. Only in her mid-thirties, she could remember that she had often had the same effect on some of her young charges: indeed, were she not so modest, she would recognise that she had not yet lost that power of attraction. Ashley Thomas, with her lack of experience, believed that Gordon was ill-behaved because he simply didn't like her. The more worldly headmistress recognised that it was because he had a massive crush on the young teacher.
There was, however, another avenue that Miss Chadwick, as a good professional, would have to explore to establish the explanation for Gordon's erratic behaviour and it was with this in mind that she asked him, "How are things at home, Gordon. No problems there?"
It was immediately clear that she was barking up the wrong tree. The look of joy on the boy's face was so genuine when he answered the question that it dispelled any doubts that she might have had.
"Gosh, no, Miss Chadwick. I'd been without a mother for so long I didn't know what I was missing. But Jen, Mum that is, is really smashing. It's like she's always been my mum and I've always been her son." He sat back smiling with satisfaction.
"And you are getting along OK with your new sisters?"
Gordon laughed. "Oh yes. I've always been an only child, so it's nice to have the company. Of course they do all the things that sisters ought to do. They're a damned nuisance... oh, sorry Miss."
"It's alright, Gordon," Miss Chadwick chuckled. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."
"Yes, well, they can get under my feet at times but they are very helpful too. And Sarah in particular gives me tips. You know, on how girls think and that. She always teases me about being clumsy with girls."
"Perhaps she should give you tips on Miss Thomas, Gordon. Which brings me back to why you are here. What on earth are we to do with you?"
Miss Chadwick rose from her chair and walked around to the front of her desk. She passed Gordon, telling him to remain seated, and approached an old Edwardian hat and coat stand which incorporated a rack intended for walking sticks and umbrellas. This incongruously antique piece of furniture had been rescued from the small school at which she had started her career as a memento of happy days. Miss Chadwick kept in this rack a selection of canes of various lengths. She selected one about thirty inches long which she swished viciously through the air.
"Do you know what this is, Gordon?"
Gordon's mouth dried but he managed to articulate, "Yes, Miss. It's a cane."
"Well done." Miss Chadwick smiled and swished the cane again. "Have you seen one before?"
"No, Miss. Not in the flesh, that is."
"Or felt it on the flesh, either." She chuckled at her little joke before taking the cane in both hands and bending it into an arc. Then she swished it for a third time.
"What I sometimes do, Gordon, with my naughty young gentlemen..." Miss Chadwick was speaking quite coolly now and there was something cold and almost cruel in her blue-grey eyes. "I have them stand in the centre of the carpet." She pointed to the spot with the tip of her cane. "Right there."
She walked across to the other side of the carpet to where there was an overstuffed armchair. Mrs Chadwick was taller than the average woman and, although slender, she still had an alluring curve to her hips and bottom. Gordon appreciated the sway of her carriage as she walked, even through the terror he felt at the sight of the cane in her hand. She picked up a cushion and placed it on the arm of the chair.
"And then, Gordon, I have them bend over and touch their toes so that their bottoms are up in the air and the seats of their trousers are nice and tight. Then..."
There was a swift whoosh followed by a meaty thwack as Miss Chadwick swished the cane down onto the cushion producing a cloud of dust and leaving a deep furrow in the velvet pile. Gordon gasped and felt tears stinging his eyes. He fought them back and Miss Chadwick laughed.
"It stings like the devil, I'm told," she said. "And six of those, six of the best as they say, leaves a boy with a very sore bottom. Most of my young gentlemen can't sit down properly for hours and hours after that."
Gordon gulped and Miss Chadwick leant back against the armchair and swished the cane through the air playfully.
"Would you like that, Gordon? Would you like a good swishing? Would you like to take home a very sore bottom and show your six red and burning stripes to your stepmama? Well, would you?"
Gordon's mouth was dry and he had difficulty swallowing but he managed to say, "No, Miss. I wouldn't like that at all."
Not to be reposted, reproduced or distributed, in part or whole.