by Pet Jeffery
In general, I am a good sailor, but I was a little queasy as the Pup pitched and rolled in the wintry waves. Ahead, the dim bulk of Trinity Island School loomed through the murk. The previous term, the school cinema club had shown an American film on the theme of crime doesn't pay. Since then, the girls often referred to the school as Alcatraz. The outline of the buildings, shrouded in mist, and viewed from the sea, had rather the look of the infamous prison. The comparison to the federal penitentiary made me smile. I held the exulted position of Maxima, which placed me amongst the warders, rather than the convicts. Nobody gave me so much as the lightest swat. Miss Parker's cane had never bitten into my bottom.
It was Wednesday, December 30th, 1959. For the time of year, the temperature was mild, but clouds obscured the sky, and a brisk wind blew, hence the choppy sea. As yet, I had no inkling of the catastrophic fall from grace that would etch the date upon my memory. It was, amid other calamities, the day on which I was to receive my first caning.
This being Northern Ireland, religion divided everything. Our school and St Mary's Convent occupied separate islands. Two miles of sea and centuries of schism sundered us from them. While the Devlin family worked the Catholic ferries, my school relied upon the boats operated by the Protestant Carsons. Personally, I have no sympathy with sectarianism. Sooner or later, it's sure to lead to bloodshed.
If one arrives with luggage too heavy to carry far, as I always did, the ferry is a cab ride from the railway station. That day, I'd taken Mr Ryan's Catholic taxi because I knew that he had a large family to feed. I gave him a handsome tip, too. As Mr Ryan's antiquated and dilapidated vehicle coughed its way from the station forecourt, Mr Foster glowered at us from his shiny Presbyterian cab. He couldn't fail to recognise my school uniform as Protestant.
Mr and Mrs Carson owned two motorboats, the diminutive Pup, and the Royal Shamrock; the latter was almost a ship. Next week, school would commence, and the larger vessel would be necessary to accommodate the crowds of returning girls. Today, a few mistresses, a gaggle of my fellow pupils and I were going back a week before the start of term. Diana Perring, the Games Captain, certainly did so because she had lacrosse fixtures to organise. The reason for my early return followed from my family home no longer offering me a comfortable environment. I was in disgrace. School seemed far preferable to the angry silences at home. Accordingly, I had taken a jaundiced view of the world, even before the Pup's motion upset my stomach.
"How come, Jude, you're going back to Alcatraz so early?" Deborah Hamilton, a fifth former, asked Judith Castle, a prefect.
Deborah's informality annoyed me. It was true that Judith was only a junior prefect but, even so, Deborah should have addressed her as 'Miss' and certainly not shortened her name. I hoped for a sharp rebuke; I liked things done properly. Possibly, my passion for correctness connected with my parents' relationship to one another: strained for as long as I could remember. Over the years, I've often had a sense of teetering on the edge of an abyss, down which the smallest error might send me plummeting. To my discomfort, instead of scolding her companion, Judith replied affably.
"I was showing my little sister some lacrosse moves in the long gallery. It wasn't my fault that the wretched vase got in the way of the ball."
"You're in disgrace, then?"
"Yeah." Judith sighed. "Although not as much as some other people, I reckon." She glanced sharply in my direction. "The whole vase business was a silly fuss; the pot was hundreds of years old. High time they replaced it with a new one, if you ask me. Not that anyone did ask me. Instead, Mater gave me a right royal whacking and packed me off, back to Alcatraz, as soon as she could fix it with Park Fark."
I was, momentarily at least, speechless with indignation. Referring to Miss Parker, our headmistress, as 'Park Fark' broke several school rules; perhaps the least of them was that we should not mock the local common people. 'Fark' was a crude imitation of the Northern Irish pronunciation of an extremely rude word. Using that expletive, in any form, was a misdemeanour for which a girl could expect a thorough spanking, if not the cane. The phrase 'park fark', in its literal meaning, had to do with activity on the back seat of a stationary car, something in which no decent girl would participate. A couple of weeks before Christmas, Miss Parker had given Gillian Benson, of the Fifth Form, six of the best for an overheard conversation in which she used the disrespectful and scandalous nickname 'Park Fark'. I had been amongst the pupils in the cob, as we called the lavatories, when Gillian displayed the six neat purple stripes across her buttocks. Her bottom looked very sore, and I wondered how it felt to walk or sit after receiving such a punishment.
Deborah's reaction to Judith's speech made no allusion to the junior prefect's use of 'Park Fark'. "Cheer up, Jude, you're not the only one in disgrace."
Someone had to object. I glanced at three mistresses huddled in conversation. Either they had not heard, or they didn't care; I hoped that it was the former. As I rose to my feet to remonstrate with Judith, she committed a further piece of disrespect.
"You, too, I suppose, Debbie. And, to judge from what I heard, and the look of thunder on Helena's face..."
"Castle!" I roared. "I am Maxima of this school. As such, you will address me as 'Miss' and refer to me as 'Miss Merrihaugh-Spencer'. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Miss, sorry," Judith replied sheepishly.
"You're sorry, are you? I don't think that 'sorry' is good enough." I removed a notebook and pencil from my blazer pocket. "How many black marks shall I award you?"
"But, Miss, I'm a prefect."
At Trinity Island School, our uniforms declared our status. The lowest orders wore grey pinafore dresses, the skirt hems of which were at mid-thigh level. In 1959, such a hemline was not yet fashionable. Both the pinafores with short skirts, and those who wore them, were known as cutties. Deborah wore a plain burgundy blazer and matching knee-length skirt, signifying that she held no special place, high or low, in the school hierarchy; she was a scholly. Her tie was of maroon and yellow stripes. Judith's tie, by contrast, was dark red with the school crest, of three lions and a shamrock, in golden yellow. It was like mine, a prefect's tie. The junior prefects' blue braid trimmed her blazer, marking her as a junie. White braid was the mark of a middler, or middle-ranking prefect. The yellow braid of my blazer signified high office, the entitlement of only four girls, known as the lionesses: The Head Girl, her Deputy, the Games Captain, and me, the Maxima. As an additional mark of honour, the lionesses wore navy-blue skirts in place of burgundy.
My position as a lioness certainly allowed me to give black marks to cutties and schollies. The black marks I awarded were handed to Miss Clarke, the Deputy Headmistress, and might, if the offence warranted it, translate into purple marks, such as Gillian Benson had displayed in the cob. Another result of accumulating too many black marks could be assignment to the Detention Class, commonly known, by both teachers and pupils, as the Chain Gang. Most pupils at Trinity Island School performed routine domestic tasks: washing the pans and dishes after our meals, scrubbing floors, and many other jobs. The work allotted to the Chain Gang was often heavy, dirty, or otherwise irksome.
I have never had the misfortune to attend a day school, but I believe that their detention classes rely upon pupils remaining behind at the end of the day, after most of the girls have gone home. Trinity Island, like all decent schools, is a boarding school, so none of us go home at the end of the day. The Chain's Gang's detention involves taking shorter breaks between terms. I imagined that their families were pleased by any respite from the minxes' pranks.
Perhaps, strictly speaking, I should not award black marks to a junie, but the rule was almost as flexible as I understood Miss Parker's cane to be. If Judith insisted, I would have to refer her insolence to a mistress. The teachers aboard the Pup clearly took no interest in my confrontation with Judith. If pressed to intervene, they would probably pass the matter on to Miss Parker or to Miss Clarke.
"I wonder," I said, "how Miss Parker would react to your calling her 'Park Fark'."
"All right, Miss," Judith said, after a pause. "I remember what Miss Parker did to Gillian Benson. All the same, I've got something that maybe outshines Gillian's stripes."
To my surprise, Judith lifted her skirt, tucking the rear of the hem into her waistband, and exposing her burgundy bags; at Trinity Island School our regulation undergarments are known as bags. That word is apt; the knickers are very baggy. I was disappointed to observe that Judith had not violated the school underwear regulations. Had she committed such an infraction, I might have shamed her by insisting that she change her undergarment at once. Despite her status as a prefect, I could envisage my directing Judith to remove her non-uniform knickers before she rummaged in her luggage for a more suitable pair. Whether that exceeded my powers as Maxima was a debateable issue but, whatever Judith was doing, it clearly had nothing to do with debate. Had I obliged the prefect to change her underwear, mistresses would have tutted, and girls would have giggled. Judith's blushes might have soothed my temper. But that was not to be. Since nobody, in my experience, wore unauthorised underwear other than on her way to school at the beginning of term, or on her way home for the holidays, embarrassing a culprit in that way wouldn't arise until Easter, and probably not then.
I glanced at Mrs Carson at the helm. If her husband had steered the Pup, it would not have been permissible for Judith to reveal her bags. In such circumstances, one of the mistresses aboard should have already intervened to halt the doubtful business, rather than allow a man to gaze upon a girl's exposed knickers and, I couldn't help feeling, rightly stopping the unseemly display.
Judith was not content merely to expose her underwear; she proceeded to lower both her bags and the white under-knickers, known as linings, worn beneath the regulation baggy burgundy pants. The junior prefect had mentioned her mother whacking her for breaking a vase. Now that her bottom was bare, I could see the results of this chastisement: ugly bluish brown bruises. I'd held the position of Maxima for several years, and in that time I had seen a fair number of already sore bottoms, but nothing like this. The marks were far from the neat stripes left by a cane. I wondered what her mother had used to whack her delinquent daughter.
"Crikey!" I exclaimed, although this was a word the mistresses discouraged us from using, sometimes enforcing their views on unsuitable language with corporal punishment. "Your mater made a bubonic bandage of your bottom!"
My reference was to our regular Thursday lunchtime pudding: suet stodge liberally streaked with bluish purple. The girls had named the dessert for a fancied resemblance to dressings applied to plague victims' sores. Nobody, of course, knew how such bandages had looked, but the Thursday sweet course bore a striking resemblance to Judith's well whacked buttocks.
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